Khutyn Monastery

Russia, Russia

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The Khutyn Monastery, or Varlaamo-Khutynsky Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, is a historic Russian Orthodox site 10 km northeast of Veliky Novgorod on the Volkhov River in a once-evil-reputed area called Khutyn, founded around 1192 by St. Varlaam (boyar Oleksa Mikhailovich) who built the original Transfiguration Church consecrated that year by Archbishop Gregory. After Varlaam's death, it grew prominent with royal patronage; Vasily III commissioned the current six-pillared stone Transfiguration Cathedral by 1515, modeled on Rostov's Assumption Cathedral as early Muscovite architecture, later joined by a 1552 refectory with St. Varlaam Church under Ivan IV, 1646 St. Gabriel annex (Gavrila Derzhavin burial site), and Catherine the Great's Neoclassical bell tower. Enduring Soviet repurposing as a hospital and school, it revived as a women's convent preserving relics, frescoes, Varlaam's well and hill chapel within white-stone walls amid meadows.