The monastery of Saint Alexander of Svir lies in the lake country north-east of Saint Petersburg, in a landscape of forest, water and long northern light. It was founded at the end of the fifteenth century by the hermit whose name it bears, who withdrew into these woods before disciples gathered around him and a community took shape. What grew from that solitude is unusual in plan: two separate walled enclosures a short distance apart, each with its own churches, bell tower and monastic ranges, one developed around the original hermitage and burial place, the other around the main conventual buildings. White walls, tent roofs and onion domes stand against the trees. Closed and put to other uses during the Soviet period, the monastery was returned to the Church at the end of the twentieth century and has been progressively restored, with monastic life resumed. The programme documents both the architecture and the reawakening of a major site of Russian Orthodoxy.
