Few places concentrate as much history as Solovki. Founded in the 15th century on an island in the White Sea, close to the Arctic Circle, the monastery became one of the great spiritual and economic powers of the Russian north, developing fisheries, salt works, canals between the island's lakes, and defences of a scale that let it withstand siege: walls built of colossal glacial boulders, laid dry, unlike anything else in Russian architecture. In the 20th century the same walls held one of the first Soviet labour camps, and that memory is inseparable from the site. Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, Solovki is once more a monastery. Filmed in 4K in the long northern light, the programme reads the boulder ramparts, the churches and the island landscape, and confronts the two histories the place carries.
