El Monastery of the Trinity and Saint Sergius is in the city of Sergiyev Posad, to 70 km of Moscow, listed as an important spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 1476, Ivan III invited several teachers to build the Church. This structure is one of the few remaining examples of a Russian church covered with a bell tower. The interior contains the first signs of the use of tiles for decoration.
In the 16th century, Basil III added the Nikon annex and the Serapion tent, where several of Sergius's disciples were buried. And it took 26 years to build the six-column Cathedral, which was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in 1559.
The cathedral is much larger than its model and its namesake in the Moscow Kremlin. The magnificent iconostasis from the 16th to 18th centuries features Simon Ushakov's masterpiece, the icon of the Last Supper. The interior walls were painted with blue and violet frescoes by a team of Yaroslavl masters in 1684. The vault contains burials of Boris Godunov, his family and various patriarchs from the 20th century.
As the monastery became one of the richest landowners in Russia, it gradually grew into the modern city of Sergiyev Posad, which was known as Zagorsk in the Soviet era.
Right in front of the monastery walls, stands the convent of Saint Paraskeva, among whose buildings the Saint Paraskeva Church of (1547), Introduction Church (1547), and a 17th century chapel at Saint Paraskeva's well are still visible. .
In 1550, a wooden palisade surrounding the cloister was replaced by 1,5 kilometer-long stone walls, with 12 towers, which helped the monastery to withstand a 16-month Polish siege in 1608-1610. A hole-in-the-wall shell on the cathedral doors is preserved as a reminder of Wladyslaw IV's failed site in 1618.
Numerous structures were added to the Holy Trinity monastery in the 17th century, including a small baroque palace of the patriarchs, known for its luxurious interiors, and a royal palace, with its facades painted in the original design.