The Resurrection Monastery, better known as the New Jerusalem Monastery, is a major centre of the Russian Orthodox Church founded in 1656 near the city of Istra, roughly 70 kilometres from Moscow. It was established by Patriarch Nikon, who conceived it as a re-creation of the holy sites of Palestine on Russian soil: the surrounding landscape was renamed after the Jordan and the Mount of Olives, and the great Resurrection Cathedral was modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Severely damaged during the Second World War and painstakingly restored in the decades since, the ensemble remains one of the boldest architectural statements of seventeenth-century Russia. This documentary explores its origins and enduring religious significance in the Moscow region.
