Raifsky Bogoroditsky Monastery

It all began with a hermit named Filaret: after giving away his estate and taking vows in Moscow, in 1613 he built a hut by a forest lake — amid pine woods held sacred by the local Mari people. Word of the holy man spread through the district, a skete grew around the cell, and in 1661 the metropolitan of Kazan, Lavrenty, blessed the founding of a hermitage. Its name honoured the Sinai-Raifa monastery on the Red Sea, where, by tradition, monks had been martyred. Since 1668 the chief shrine has been a copy of the Georgian icon of the Mother of God brought from the Chernogorsky monastery near Pinega; tens of thousands of pilgrims still come to it every year. Before the fire of 1689 the monastery was wooden; the stone ensemble took shape at the turn of the century: in 1690–1717 rose the crenellated walls with towers, stretching more than half a kilometre around the perimeter. The monastery stands inside the Raifa section of the Volga-Kama reserve — around it are an arboretum with trees from across the world and the quiet Raifa lake. After decades of Soviet neglect the community returned to the church and is today the liveliest monastic place in Tatarstan: services, a pilgrims' guesthouse, a museum and restored churches.