Kirzhach

Kirzhach grew on the high left bank of the river of the same name around the Monastery of the Annunciation. In the fourteenth century Sergius of Radonezh left his Trinity monastery for a time and established a new religious house in the forest here. His followers built cells and a wooden church; when Sergius returned to Trinity, his disciple Roman remained to guide the community and complete its establishment.

The monastery gained extensive lands through gifts from Moscow's rulers. A survey of 1562 recorded villages, churchyards and hundreds of households belonging to it in several districts. Around the religious house grew a settlement that eventually became Kirzhach. The monastery was suppressed in 1764 during the secularization of church property, and its churches became parish churches. The buildings that remained recalled the long connection between this river town and one of Russia's most influential monastic traditions.