New Jerusalem Monastery
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The New Jerusalem Monastery, also known as the Voskresensky Monastery (Russian: Новоиерусалимский монастырь) is a male monastery, located in today's town of Istra in the Moscow Oblast, Russia.
The New Jerusalem Monastery was founded in 1656 by Patriarch Nikon as a patriarchal residence in the outskirts of Moscow. The architectural ensemble of the monastery includes the Resurrection Cathedral (1656-1685), identical to a cathedral of the same name in Jerusalem, Patriarch Nikon's abode (1658), stone wall with towers (1690-1694), Church of the Holy Trinity (1686-1698), and other buildings, all of them finished with majolica and stucco moulding. Architects P.I.Zaborsky, Yakov Bukhvostov, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Matvei Kazakov, Karl Blank and others took part in the creation of this ensemble. In the 17th century, the New Jerusalem Monastery owned a big library, compiled by Nikon from the manuscripts, taken from other monasteries. By the secularization of 1764, the monastery had already possessed some 13,000 peasants.
In 1918, the New Jerusalem Monastery was closed down. In 1920, they opened a museum of history and arts and a museum of regional studies in on the premises of the monastery. In 1935, the Moscow Oblast Museum of Regional Studies was opened in one of the monastic buildings. In 1941, the German army ransacked the New Jerusalem Monastery, blowing up and burning some of its architectural monuments. In 1959, the museum was re-opened for public. The New Jerusalem Monastery resumed its service as a male monastery only in the 1990s.
