Aleksandro-Svirskiy Monastyr'

Staraya Sloboda, Russia, Russia

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The Aleksandro-Svirskiy Monastery in Staraya Sloboda, Leningrad Oblast, Russia, was founded in 1487 by St. Alexander of Svir, a Valaam monk who settled between Roshchinsky and Holy Lakes east of Lake Ladoga after a vision of the Holy Trinity, establishing twin cloisters—the Trinity and Transfiguration—with original oaken chapels that grew into major Orthodox centers. Flourishing in the 17th century through tsarist patronage including tax rights from the Svir Fair, it features preserved structures like the five-domed Transfiguration Cathedral (1644) housing Alexander's relics, three-tented belfry (1649), roomy Trinity Cathedral (1695), and 1718 hospital chapel amid monastic cells. Secularized in 1764 under Catherine the Great, it became a seminary and gulag (Svirlag) site post-1917 Revolution with relics desecrated, suffering WWII damage before restoration and revival as an active men's monastery in the late 20th century.