Nativity Church at Putinki

The snow-white church with its multiple tents and azure-and-gold domes resembles a daintily carved piece of ivory.

The Nativity church at Putinki consists of six exquisite tented roofs arranged in a highly unusual composition.

The church was commissioned by Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich in 1649 in order to grace a highway leading from Moscow to the Trinity Monastery.

After the Vysokopetrovsky Monastery was closed down by the Soviet authorities in 1929, Archimandrite Bartholomew Remov arranged for the monks and nuns to continue their monastic life in secret at the Nativity Church, where he was the Rector.

The spiritual life of the monastery continued at Putinki until the NKVD was informed and arrested everyone involved in 1935.