Church of St. Nicholas—Solovetskii Transfiguration Monastery

Photo: Kate Mikheeva, Wikimedia Commons Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Left to right: Transfiguration Cathedral, Church of Saint Nicholas

Photo: © Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, William C. Brumfield Photograph Collection,LC-DIG-ppmsc-01217 (digital file from original)

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Left to right: Transfiguration Cathedral, Church of Saint Nicholas, bell tower

Photo: William C Brumfield, Library of Congress, Brumfield Photo Collection

Left to right: Bell tower, Church of Saint Nicholas, Transfiguration Cathedral

Photo: William C Brumfield, Library of Congress, Brumfield Photograph Collection

Saint Nicholas Tower and Gate

Photo: William C Brumfield, Journeys through the Russian Empire: The Photographic Legacy of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky Used by permission

Church of St. Nicholas, left, and the Cathedral of the Transfiguration

Photo: © Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, William C. Brumfield Photograph Collection, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02987 (digital file from original)

Solovetskii Island, Arkhangelsk Oblast Russia

Russian Orthodox

Church Website

The monastery was established in the 1420s and became the most important spiritual center in the Russian North. The Church of St. Nicholas was built from 1832-1834. From 1926-1939 it was one of the first Soviet forced labor camps, closed when the forests had been cleared. Before World War II it became a sea cadet school. Solovetsky Monastery is now a historical and architectural museum—one of the first Russian sites in the UNESCO World Heritage List. There is now a small group of monks in the monastery. The monastery is being repaired and rebuilt.