Ostrov grad sviyazhsk fishermen's farmstead. Mother of God-Assumption Monastery. How to get to Sviyazhsk from Kazan by boat

Of all "pearls" of Tatarstan This one is perhaps the largest. Island-city of Sviyazhsk based 24 May 1551 years during the reign Ivan the Terrible, then on Chuvash land Kazan Khan Shigalei like a fortress, completely surrounded by water.

• A bit of history
• Geographical position
• How to get there?
• Attractions of the island
• Religious Shrines
• Memorable objects
• Museums and entertainment
• Holidays in Sviyazhsk?
• Where to go with children?
• Where to stay in Sviyazhsk

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A bit of history

Sviyazhsk is history in the flesh. Each milestone reflects the past the whole country, and not just one. Let's start with the fact that the real full city With two churches, in the name of the Nativity of the Virgin and Sergius of Radonezh, the necessary infrastructure And communications Total in 4 weeks! This alone makes it unique And the only of a kind.

Another interesting circumstance- first Sviyazhsk had to stand completely different place, and was built there. But later dismantled on a log and forwarded along the Volga to where indicated His Royal Majesty. Namely on modern place stay.

Geographical position

Sviyazhsk is located in Zelenodolsky district of the Republic of Tatarstan at the confluence of two rivers Sviyagi And Pike. Coordinates: 55°46′20″ N 48°39′35″ E

The population is slightly more 200 people- by the standards of such a huge country as Russia, this is comparable to small village.

The city is beautiful at any time of the year and in any weather. Gorgeous and as different as the paintings of artists, summer sunsets- on the one hand, and covered with snow quiet streets without any signs of traffic. Feeling it's like you're in another dimension.

How to get there?

Arrive in Sviyazhsk can be done in several ways:

If you chose to travel by car, then:

ATTENTION! Entrance to the city by car forbidden. The car can be left parking lot.

The boats go there every day at the same time - 8:20 morning. They depart from River port of Kazan. Finding the port is easy, any passer-by will tell you the address - Devyataeva street, 1.

Back the ship will depart for Kazan from Sviyazhsk to 16:30 , With river station, taking with them those who went on business colorful local residents and impressed trip of tourists.

Attractions of the island

Combination architectural monuments, narrow streets, almost rural life, and even a powerful fence - fortress walls, in general give the impression ancient fairy tale. Remember, after all, "past the island-Buyan ..." Why not?! Pushkin been here. They say that even fell in love with this place. Perhaps it is the local beauties and described by Alexander Sergeevich in their stories. Because Sviyazhsk is a little fairy tale.

Religious Shrines

One and a half kilometers long there are quite a few islands religious monuments:

Memorable objects

What Interesting, before the townspeople lived right in ancient houses. But with the advent of modern communications it was decided to relocate them to more modern houses with electricity and the possibility of heating with natural gas. So there was no need remake monuments of architecture, which means crumble the walls And spoil primordial beauty. Even new buildings in Sviyazhsk locals do similar to monuments.

Museums and entertainment

Many artists, poets And writers and now chant Sviyazhsk in his work.

Don't miss the opportunity ride around Sviyazhsk on a carriage. On horse yard both in antiquity and now live beautiful horses. They can be stroked and fed. lovers equestrian sports will be happy to offer you a ride around the island on horseback.

And here's another place Lazy Torzhok "what's next to Christmas Square, invites its visitors to put on armor and feel real warrior-defenders. Here you can shoot from medieval weapons. This program is called Sagittarius fun«.

And in between the energy-intensive business defense of the motherland you can taste the same medieval dishes in the tavern Ivan". Just don't think bad. The food is here, of course. fresh, just cooked for a long time forgotten technologies.

Where to go and what to see in Sviyazhsk?

What to see on your own?

Self-guided tour of Sviyazhsk is good, but with guide still better. Because no one else won't tell you so much interesting legends. For years, caring citizens bit by bit put it all together memories, stories And legends about their small homeland and now they are happy to spend excursions.

Every street bend, every foundation or brick- lives here for something" And " for some reason". Interesting recreate in your imagination a complete picture formation of the past, present and possible future "pearls" of Kazan.

Season tours open here at April and ends at the end October. But this does not mean at all that winter Sviyazhsk is less beautiful. excursion tour can be bought at any travel agency "Kazan, as well as already on the spot, upon arrival in Sviyazhsk.

Holidays in Sviyazhsk?

Holidays in Sviyazhsk are noisy And funny. One of the must-sees stand out:

Where to go with children?

For travelers with kids travel companies can offer many options. There are full excursions oriented to a specific age.

And in the capital of Tatarstan there is also something to see. Read in this article where to go with a child in Kazan.

At all kids, for example, the fabulous side of the island will be interesting - Pushkinskoye Lukomorye and adventures Buyan Island. Older guys will not leave indifferent the ascent to the most high point , ruin And old legends fortresses.

Where to stay in Sviyazhsk

For one day island the length of the whole one and a half kilometers, of course, you will bypass. But comprehend all history, feed atmosphere and extraordinary aura of the ancient island-city in a few hours of stay impossible.

Most popular among tourists and pilgrims overnight stays Also mystical like everything on this island. They belong to architectural monuments.

In this case, there is an option stay the night in a fairytale city. Here you will find several hotels. But it's better in advance. book places. Still, in spite of all antiquity, we are now in the 21st century and there are those who want to plunge headlong into history so many.

Sviyazhsk is called place of power. But for real you can only feel it having been here. Anyone who has been here at least once returns. And who knows, maybe yours visit old Russian town will be decisive in your life?

No matter how strange it may seem at first glance, Sviyazhsk owes its birth to ... Ivan the Terrible. This was on his instructions, and with his "light hand" on Mount Kruglyaya, 25 kilometers from the capital of the Kazan Khanate, a wooden fortress was erected in 1551 as a future springboard for the capture of Kazan. The fortress was built in just four weeks, which was unthinkable in terms of all the parameters of the then construction of fortifications. And the whole secret was that, in fact, the fortress was built in two stages. The management of the construction and drawing up drawings of the fortifications of the future city was entrusted to the famous master, clerk Ivan Grigorievich Vyrodkov. The first stage of construction was carried out in winter, upstream of the Volga, in the city of Myshkin. By the spring of 1551 wooden kremlin with walls, 18 towers, buildings for the army and two churches was already ready. All pegs-logs of the fortress ensemble were neatly numbered and lowered on rafts to the confluence of the Sviyaga into the Volga. Here they were caught, and in a 4-week period a team of 75 thousand carpenters built a fortress city on Round Hill, which was immediately populated by Russian people and equipped with artillery. This was the second stage of construction. They called the remake Ivangorod. But the name did not stick, and soon it was called Sviyazhsk.

From the fortifications of Sviyazhsk, only one building has survived. This is Trinity Church. It was cut down either in Myshkin or in Uglich in the winter of 1550, floated along the Volga along with other structures of the fortress, and assembled in one day by the soldiers of Prince P.S. Serebryany-Obolensky. It is said that the construction of this church was under the vigilant control of Prince Serebryany himself. The basis of the church is a log cabin made of thick larch logs. The church was consecrated on May 17, 1551 - the day of the Holy Trinity.

About how we saw the Trinity Church. The church stands on a whitewashed brick base, sheathed on the outside with boards and painted with gray-blue oil paint. The dome with an eight-pitched roof is covered with green-painted iron. Porches are attached to the main building of the church. The large square frames of the windows of the outbuildings occupy all the wall spaces, and the glass is covered with wooden window frames.

The church was closed, but they say that inside it was also redone, and at the present time (our stay in Sviyazhsk) it is empty. Icons from the iconostasis of the Toritskaya church are collected in State Museum fine arts RT.

I can’t show my photos of the church for a reason: I simply didn’t take a picture of it, as I took it for a remake. Yes. Like this. No more, no less!

(According to the network, during the last restoration, the church was redone again, but now in the old way).

At the entrance to the gates of the former John the Baptist Monastery, the wooden Trinity Church stands on the left. The photo shows her "piece".

Trinity Church (photo from the Internet).

Then Sviyazhsk will become a monastic town with the Trinity-Sergius, Assumption and John the Baptist monasteries, will be upset with new churches and monastic cells-buildings, a horse yard and settlements with merchant houses, will acquire a bakery and water tower, a gymnasium and a hospital, will be equipped with cobbled streets and gas lamps ...
Sviyazhsk will become large shopping center and the first Christian city of the Kazan region ...
And then ... then it will gradually fade away ...

The main part of the area of ​​the former convent of St. John the Baptist is occupied by the Cathedral of Our Lady of All Who Sorrow Joy, built in 1896 - 1906 by architect F. N. Malinovsky. .

...

Inside the cathedral, there is excellent acoustics, a magnificently beautiful space with shabby and blurred picturesque paintings of the walls and dome.

Iconostasis.

An old metal staircase rises to the belfry, fenced off with a construction tape with a sign prohibiting climbing up

The refectory church of St. Sergius of Radonezh the Wonderworker, built in 1604, has been preserved in the monastery courtyard.

In the shade of the wall you can rest from the heat.

Monastery fence.

From the former John the Baptist Monastery along Uspenskaya Street we went to the Assumption Monastery. Construction work was going on in the monastery, and the entrance to its territory was closed. The only place through which one could get to the monastery courtyard was a gap in the wall for the movement of construction equipment and trucks. We took advantage of the gap

The territory of the monastery was a continuous construction site: it was completely dug up by earthmoving equipment, heaps of soil, sand and rubble were piled up next to the trenches, and the cathedrals stood in the forests and were closed for repair and restoration.

But we saw the main temples of the monastery. To the right is the magnificent Assumption Cathedral, built on the basis of Pskov architecture in the middle of the 16th century. The cathedral was erected in 4 years from white hewn stone by the artel of Postnik Yakovlev and Ivan Shiryai - architects who built St. Basil's Cathedral (Pokrovsky Cathedral) in Moscow and the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Kazan. The temple acquired its current appearance in the 18th century, when, under the influence of the then fashionable trend of "Ukrainian baroque", the cathedral grew significantly in height, gaining 12 sharp kokoshniks and a new dome.

On the left is the bell tower of the Assumption Monastery. The bell tower belongs to the St. Nicholas Church - one of the first built in Sviyazhsk. St. Nicholas Church - active, but open only to monks. The height of the bell tower is 43 meters, - this is the most high building in Sviyazhsk. Beautiful and strict. During the time of Ivan the Terrible, on the bell tower were installed tower clock, and from the lower tier to the shore of Lake Pike led a secret underground passage, designed to supply water in the event of a siege of the Sviyazhsk fortress.

We could not go further and see all the corners of the monastery courtyard due to construction work.
We returned to the outer side, and walked along the monastery wall. It is also interesting here: on the one hand, a three-five-meter stone height, on the other - open spaces - views of the surroundings.

Monastery wall with a loophole.

ABOUT future fate and I will not tell the history of Sviyazhsk. I will give only fragments from the book by Sergei Sokolov “Kazan. Portrait in the style of impressionism»

"... The first heavy blow to the city was inflicted by the revolution and civil war. Here, in 1918, Leon Trotsky stopped the retreat of the Red Army by decimation, a method forgotten since ancient Rome and the hordes of Genghis Khan. Every tenth Red Army soldier was shot. They simply lined up a military unit on the square, retreating under the onslaught of the army of Kappel and the White Czechs, and every tenth person was shot in the back of the head ...

Near this wall, the White Guards shot the Red Guards. (photo from internet)

By order of Trotsky, with the assistance of the revolutionary writer and poet Demyan Bedny, main square Sviyazhsk was erected a monument to Judas Iscariot, brought from Moscow on an armored train! The sculpture depicted a man threatening the sky with his fist. Even such a hater of Orthodoxy as Vladimir Lenin considered this a mistake, and soon the nonsense monument was removed. But monasteries and churches were closed, icons were torn off the iconostasis. Monks and priests were shot, as well as many residents of the city.

The Nativity Cathedral and Nikolskaya Church were blown up, dismantled gate church Assumption Monastery. Then Sviyazhsk became a subdivision of the Gulag for a long time and prisoners were kept in the monastery cells, and the brick fences of the monasteries were the last “wall” for the “enemies of the people” doomed to be shot. How many people found their death in these concentration camps is unknown, the archives are not available. Then a hospital for the disabled of the Great patriotic war and a mental hospital. These were not institutions for the treatment and recovery of patients, these were premises for isolation from society of the incurable, mutilated by the war or Stalin's camps, or simply objectionable. Best place than the island of Sviyazhsk, you can’t find such a thing ... "http://sviyazhsk.info/sviyazhsk/publitsistika

Looking at the monastery fence, we almost passed by two slabs set into the wall.
"Vladimir Golitsyn Artist, sailor 1901 - 1943" "Sofya Olsufieva Restorer 18 .. - ... (hereinafter the numbers are erased)". And crosses...
At home, I found information about these people ... Frost on the skin ...

Sofia Vladimirovna Olsufieva (June 3, 1884 - February 15, 1943) Painter, graphic artist, restorer. From a noble noble family. From 1934 she lived in Moscow, where she got a job as an artist-restorer at the Museum fine arts. Accompanied her husband, an employee of the department of ancient Russian painting Tretyakov Gallery, on business trips to old Russian cities.
In March 1938 her husband was arrested and shot at the Butovo training ground "for spreading anti-Soviet rumors."
In 1941, when the threat of the occupation of Moscow arose, Sofya Olsufieva, at the age of 57, was arrested along with big group aristocrats. Sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. After the verdict, she got into a column of prisoners, who were driven to Kazan. Place of detention - Sviyazhsk concentration camp. Died in custody - Sviyazhsk concentration camp.
Place of burial - Sviyazhsky concentration camp ...

Together with Sofya Vladimirovna, her relative V.M. Golitsyn, an artist, sailor, Prince, was serving his sentence, who was arrested at the same time as her, and died in the camp in her arms.

I have been drawing since childhood. One of the builders of the ship "Perseus", participated in the Arctic expedition on the icebreaker "Malygin". Awarded a gold medal for International Exhibition in Paris for painting wooden products (1925). Inventor of children's board games, illustrator of children's books... Sentenced to 5 years in a penitentiary. He served his term in the colony of Sviyazhsk. He died from pellagra, a disease of the beriberi group.

In the wall of the monastery, where the camp was located, a slab with the dates of the life of S.V. Olsufieva and V.M. Golitsin is embedded.

V. Serov. Portrait of Sofia Vladimirovna Olsufieva. Coal, pastel. 1911 The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

From 1937 to 1948, during the functioning of the political prison of the Gulag in Sviyazhsk, 5 thousand repressed people died ... We walked around the fence ...

Once upon a time there were many churches in Sviyazhsk, and the ringing of bells made an unforgettable impression on those sailing along the Volga. In Soviet times, all the parish churches of Sviyazhsk were destroyed. The oldest surviving church is Constantine and Helena, built at the end of the 16th century and rebuilt in the 18th century. It is located near the pier.
According to legend, Ivan the Terrible himself chose the place for the church. Construction work was also going on in and around the church, so we could only see it from a distance.

...

Survived...

It's hard to even imagine what Sviyazhsk would look like if all the churches were preserved...

Here's everything we looked at. No... not all. I will also show nature and views, but that will be another time.

Sviyazhsk is both the name of an island and a rural settlement. Sviyazhsk is located in the Zelenodolsk region of the Republic of Tatarstan, at the confluence of the Schuka and Sviyaga rivers.

Our trip to Kazan has come to an end and it's time to move home to Samara. We made this trip in our own car, so we planned to see as many sights as possible along the way. We went to Kazan through, and we will go back through Sviyazhsk, Ulyanovsk and Dimitrovgrad.

Sviyazhsk on the map.

Sviyazhsk, how to get there?

The first question that arises when planning a trip to this glorious island city is: “How to get there?”

Kazan - Sviyazhsk.

Since Sviyazhsk is located 60 kilometers from the capital of Tatarstan and the third capital of Russia - Kazan, we will consider options for how to get to Sviyazhsk from Kazan:

Sviyazhsk bus.

From the "Southern" bus station of Kazan departs daily at 8-40 to Sviyazhsk scheduled bus. Price 150 r. On weekends at 9-00 additional buses run from the "Central Bus Station". (price 170 rubles) - back at 14-00. On the road 1-30.

Sviyazhsk ship.

A comfortable motor ship also runs from Kazan to Sviyazhsk, though only from May 1 to the end of September. Since 2011, a renovated river station has been operating on the island.

Every day at 8-20 from Kazan river port the passenger ship departs. Swim for more than two hours, but in this option you are guaranteed magnificent scenery Volga, as well as the opportunity to see the sights of Tatarstan from the water, such as Svyato-Voznesensky monastery and the Temple of All Religions. The cost of such pleasure is only a little more than a hundred rubles.

You can also combine bus route with a river walk. Take a bus to Vasilyevo, and then transfer to a boat.
Also on weekends excursion routes more expensive (moving 200-300 rubles) with a tour of Sviyazhsk (400-500 rubles)

Kazan - Sviyazhsk train.

One option is to take the train. There is a small ambush here. Railroad station Sviyazhsk is located 14 kilometers from the island of Sviyazhsk. In this option, you will need to take a taxi.

Schedule of trains, trains Kazan - Sviyazhsk.

The stone fence of the monastery built in the 18th-19th centuries, stretching for 1 km, resembles the Kremlin wall and gives the monastery the appearance of a fortress. The gate church of the Ascension of the Lord has a majestic view. Free entrance to the monastery is carried out through it.

The church of Herman of Kazan and Mitrofan of Voronezh adjoins the fence and the fraternal cells. The church does not make a strong impression, since in the course of several significant reconstructions it lost covered stairs and porches, baroque window frames, and at the beginning of the 20th century. was completely disassembled. The modern building was recreated according to old drawings, descriptions and photographs.

Assumption Cathedral, Sviyazhsk.

The main building in the monastery. The Assumption Cathedral was founded in 1555 and built in the style of the Pskov cathedrals, using elements of the Moscow style. The cathedral was to become luxurious and majestic. The temple was built from white hewn stone for 4 years by a master from Pskov, presumably under the guidance of Postnik Yakovlev and Ivan Shiryai, who had previously worked on the creation of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
In the 18th century, the temple was rebuilt in the Baroque style: it was then that 12 “kokoshniks” appeared and the shape of the dome changed.
The interior decoration retained the features of the 16th century, including rare, well-preserved frescoes from 1561. The only one in the world, for example, is a fresco depicting St. Christopher with a horse's head.

Assumption Cathedral - Holy place, since Herman of Kazan often served in it, and his cell was located at this cathedral. It is in it that the relics of the great saint are located.

The Rector's (Bishops') building was built in the second half of the 17th century and is a rare example of a residential building of that era.

The monastery school was built in the late 17th - early 18th century. Just like in the Rector's House, in Soviet times a psychiatric hospital was located here.

Sviyazhsk prison.

The fraternal building, built in the late 17th - early 18th century, served as a prison in the early 20th century, and then in 1953-94. closed mental hospital.

Since 1928, a children's commune was located in the monastery of the Assumption of the Virgin, which was transformed in 1938 into correctional facility per 200 juvenile prisoners. Since 1943, prisoners of war have been placed here.
During the period 1937-48. political prisoners are housed in Sviyazhsk, executions are organized, as a result of which 5,000 people died. Since 1960, the correctional institution was again reorganized into a correctional labor colony.

Let's finish the sad things and move on to entertainment, but this is already outside the monastery.

Excursions Sviyazhsk.

In Sviyazhsk you can visit interesting excursions:
pedestrian "From fortress to empire";
"History of the miracle city", including walking tour around the island with a guide, as well as a visit historical museum and Trinity Church;
"The Tale of Sviyazhsk", which includes a tour of the museum halls, the Trinity Church and the entertainment event "Streltsy Fun";
excursion “Listing through the past of Sviyazhsk…” – with additional participation in master classes in craft shops;
"Shooter Fun" interactive tour, which provides an opportunity to try on historical costumes, shoot from ancient bows and crossbows, etc.

On the picture - Historical building, Horse yard built in the 17th century. Now there is an ethnographic center with a craft settlement where you can forge a horseshoe, mold pottery and much more.

You can come to Sviyazhsk for just a few hours, as in our case, or you can come for a whole day or even for several days. Then there will be an opportunity to visit the most interesting programs and even learn horseback riding at the Horse Yard!

For children, the program "On the island of Buyan ..." is held, including a walk, an excursion to the museum, master classes and an interactive historical game with elements of reconstruction in the Skazka leisure center.
Suitable for adults and children of all ages gaming event"Heroic Strength", where two teams fight each other in historical costumes with ancient weapons, as well as in intellectual competitions.
Applications for excursions are accepted by e-mail: [email protected]

Sviyazhsk is a venue for many cultural events. Since 2009, the festival of music named after F.I. Shalyapin, since 2010 - a tournament in shooting from ancient weapons (bow and crossbow).

The island city of Sviyazhsk was still a sparsely populated city in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with private squat houses scattered over it and monuments of ancient Russian architecture towering above them, silent and unkempt witnesses of the past.

Now Sviyazhsk is one of the main tourist sites of Tatarstan, a city that returned its past, restored its historical monuments updated and welcoming, amazing and very picturesque.

The birth of the city-town of Sviyazhsk

The history of the creation of the city is connected with the development of this region by the Russians, or rather with the conquest and annexation of the Kazan Khanate to the Russian state.

In the 15th century, a cone-shaped hill overgrown with centuries-old forest stood on this site - Mount Kruglaya, surrounded by the rivers Pike and Sviyaga. And already in the middle of the 16th century there is a powerful Fortress of the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible that grew up on enemy soil as if fabulous city, by magic…

Beginning in 1547, Ivan the Terrible undertook systematic trips to Kazan but they were all unsuccessful. It was clear that without the creation of a strong support base near Kazan, it was unrealistic to capture the city. Returning from another unsuccessful campaign in 1550, the young Tsar Ivan drew attention to the ideal military-strategic location of Mount Kruglaya and decided to be a Russian fortress here. But how to build it unnoticed by the enemy, who is only 30 km away? He developed an ingenious plan: to cut down the city on the “Russian land” in the upper reaches of the Volga and then lower the marked logs into the water and assemble them already on the spot, saving time and effort.

As they say, said done. During the winter of 1550-51, walls, towers, huts and even churches were cut down in the Ugletsky forests. And in the spring, after the opening of the rivers, logs for the future fortress began to be rafted along the Volga and further along the Sviyaga. To distract the Kazanians, Russian troops captured all the crossings on the main rivers, and the detachments under the command of Prince Silver attacked the inhabitants of the Kazan Posad.

The construction of the fortress city of Sviyazhsk was unprecedented at that time - in one month a gigantic work was carried out: the territory was planned, the forest was cut down, ditches were dug out, log cabins were assembled, the fortress walls were covered with earth and stone. In the possessions of the Kazan Khan, a first-class Russian fortress grew up with eighteen towers, seven of which were travel, numerous buildings for the deployment of military forces, as well as Trinity Cathedral And Christmas Church. most high tower was Rozhdestvenskaya with the main entrance gate and a lifting grate. It housed a guardroom and an archery with two prisons. The ringing of a large self-made clock with a bell announced the changing of the guard.

During the construction of the fortress, the local population was attracted to the side of the Russians: Chuvash, Mari, Mordovians, which provided a reliable rear. Ivan the Terrible named the city-fortress Sviyazhsky.

Very soon new town became not only military fortress, but also a commercial and administrative center, where artisans and merchants willingly settled. Already at the beginning of 1552, it was a rich and lively city, numerous merchants of which sold living creatures and a lot of all sorts of goods. And 15 years later, Sviyazhsk was already a real city with a fortress (Kremlin), a settlement (fort) and settlements. In the fortress were Sovereign Treasury with artillery and food depots, 2 monasteries, 6 churches, a clerk's hut, etc. Here lived: princes, boyars, soldiers, clergy, artisans and merchants. 6 streets ran through the city, there were 370 houses and 4 shops. There were 736 residential buildings in the prison, there was a market with a guest house, customs officers were housed, a brewery and a bakery worked. The inhabitants of the settlements were mainly engaged in agriculture.

It should be noted that the city was not built spontaneously, but according to a certain plan. The main street from the Rozhdestvensky to the Nikolomozhaysky gates divided the city into two halves, as it were, the streets leading from all other entrances to the city poured into it. central square was located on both sides of the Rozhdestvensky central entrance. From the side of the fortress - there were artillery and barn yards on it. The side overlooking the settlement consisted of a gostiny dvor and malls, which descended to the pier on the Sviyaga River.

After the conquest of Kazan, for a whole century, Sviyazhsk remained a significant Russian fortress on the conquered land, an administrative and commercial Russian center, where foreign ambassadors and foreign merchants came. But with the growing influence of the Russians in Kazan, civil servants, military men, merchants and artisans gradually moved there. In Sviyazhsk active life died out, only functioning monasteries remained: Bogoroditse-Uspensky, Trinity-Sergius male and John the Baptist female, which were built to plant Christianity among the local population from the very beginning of the development of the region. Sviyazhsk became just a monastic town.

In the middle of the 18th century, when Sviyazhsk became county town , the construction activity of the monasteries intensified: the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was closed, and the burned-out John the Baptist moved to its territory. Some cathedrals were subjected to alterations, additions and improvements. Around the Trinity Church were arranged holy gate. Two-story private buildings and a number of outbuildings were erected. A refectory building was built. And at the beginning of the 19th century, for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, a large red-brick Cathedral was erected in a prosperous convent. Mother of God all the mourners of joy in the pseudo-Byzantine style. This last monastery building with an impressive dome still towers over the low buildings of Sviyazhsk to this day.

Sviyazhsk of those times was visited by many famous people. Here, on the way to exile, the disgraced Menshikov buried his wife, whose grave has been preserved. The Russian emperors Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander II stayed here. And how Pushkin liked the city! Because it was real fairy island Buyan.

History of Sviyazhsk after the revolution

After the revolution, all churches and monasteries were closed. And Sviyazhsk became sad famous city who fell under a terrible red terror in 1918 - by order of Trotsky, every tenth Red Army soldier of the local garrison shot. Their fault was that they could not defeat the White Czechs who had captured Kazan.

In the Assumption Monastery in the 1920s, a children's commune, and in the 30s a correctional colony, to which prisoners of war were later taken. In total, more than 5 thousand people died within the walls of the colony, which essentially became a subdivision of the Gulag. From the age of 53, after the death of Stalin and the closure of the camps, in the same long-suffering Assumption Monastery was created mental hospital, and the colony again became correctional labor institution.

In 1957, as a result of the formation of the Kuibyshev reservoir, the city of Sviyazhsk became an island cut off from the land. The population decreased from 2,700 people to 500. Life in the city practically came to naught, and it turned into a village, cut off from civilization. It was only in 2008 that the "road of life" was created - a bulk dam and a motorway laid along it connected Sviyazhsk with the Volga coast.

And since 2010, the city began to revive - the reconstruction of architectural and historical monuments, the creation of new museum facilities and the development of infrastructure, which was designed to help attract tourists to this amazing island city with such a difficult fate, began.

To date restored surviving temples and the Museum-Reserve. The city looks well-groomed and disposes to unhurried walks along it, during which you can admire both historical sights and great views on the river surface that surrounds you from all sides.