Vysotsky Monastery

Vysotsky Monastery (Russian: Высоцкий монастырь) is a walled Russian Orthodox monastery commanding the high left bank of the Nara River in Serpukhov, close to its confluence with the Oka. Its name stems from the Russian word for "heights". The monastery was founded in the 1370s by Vladimir the Bold and long served as a border fortress defending the southern approaches to Moscow from the Tatars. The first hegumen, Afanasy the Elder, was a disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh, whose successor, St. Nikon of Radonezh, is believed to have been tonsured a monk in this monastery. After the Russo-Crimean War (1571), which saw the monastery reduced to ashes, it was restored on a grander scale. The five-domed Cathedral of the Conception dates from that building campaign, financed by tsar Ivan the Terrible. The cathedral was almost certainly preceded by a medieval limestone church of which little is known. In 17th century the monastery was fortified with stone walls and four corner towers. It rivalled the Vladychny Monastery as the most important shrine of Serpukhov and welcomed rich patrons wishing to be buried within the monastery walls. Among those buried there are Gavrila Golovkin, the Chancellor of Peter the Great, and Fyodor Soimonov, the Governor of Siberia. The Neoclassical belfry was completed in the 1840s.