The Monastery of St. Nil' on Stolobnyi Island (View from the Solarium, 1910)

"The Monastery of St. Nil' on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver' Province, northwest of Moscow, illustrates the fate of church institutions during the course of Russian history. St. Nil (d. 1554) established a small monastic settlement on the island around 1528. In the early 1600s his disciples built what was to become one of the largest, wealthiest, monasteries in the Russian Empire. The monastery was closed by the Soviet regime in 1927, and the structure was used for various secular purposes, including a concentration camp and orphanage. In 1990 the property was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and is now a functioning monastic community once more."


Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
View of the Monastery from the Solarium, 1910.
Digital color rendering.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
(LC-DIG-ppmsc-03973) (44)
(Please see technical note below.)