Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius [complex]

Tsars' Apartments, southwest elevation, view of a covered portal, detail; The monastery remains an important centre of the Russian Orthodox Church and contains the Sergiyev Posad Historical and Art Museum. The monastery was founded in 1345 by St Sergius Radonezhsky (1322-1392) and played an important role in the history of medieval Russia. The miraculous survival of Sergius’s body after the Tatar devastation of the monastery in 1408 made it into a place of pilgrimage. In the 15th century a calligraphic centre was established there, enabling scribes and artists to develop their own style of writing, illuminating and illustrating. In 1744 the monastery was elevated to the rank of a lavra. Fortress walls (1540-1550; rebuilt 17th century) surround the conventual buildings and have a total length of 1.5 km with 11 towers . The oldest church in the monastery is the Trinity Cathedral (Troitskiy Sobor), built of stone in 1422-1423 near the site of an earlier wooden church. It is a four-piered, single-dome structure with an 18th-century porch on the south side. Most of the icons on the iconostasis were the work of Andrey Rublyov and Daniil Chorny (ca. 1360-1430); frescoes (1635) decorate the walls. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 6/22/2009