Downstream from Veliky Novgorod, where the Volkhov flows out of Lake Ilmen, the Yuriev Monastery occupies one of the founding sites of Russian Christianity. Its Saint George's Cathedral dates from the 12th century and belongs to the first age of stone building in the north: broad white walls almost without ornament, narrow windows, asymmetrical domes, an architecture whose power comes from mass and proportion rather than decoration. Around it, later ranges, a tall bell tower and the enclosure wall complete an ensemble that reads for kilometres across the flat, watery landscape. Filmed in 4K from the meadows, the river and the air, the programme examines the cathedral inside and out, follows the light through the narrow openings, and situates the monastery within the exceptional heritage of the Novgorod region.
