Stolobny Island

The island is the home of Nilov Monastery, which was founded by Saint Nilus in 1594, and previously welcomed up to 40,000 pilgrims each year.

Today the monastery complex remains one of the most impressive ensembles of Neoclassical architecture in Eastern Europe.

[citation needed] Since the 1980s, many Russian Orthodox Christians commemorate the Feast of the Epiphany on January 19th by submerging themselves in the freezing waters, including those surrounding the monastery and the island.

In 1528, tired of all the attention, he moved to a new location - the island of Stolobny at Lake Seliger, near Ostashkov.

According to legend, the devil repeatedly sent different calamities against the hermit - fires, even robbers tried to throw his cell in the lake.

Nil lived on the island a total of 27 years before his death, and he bequeathed to build a monastery on this site, which was later made.

Almost all of the prisoners were subsequently executed in April 1940 in Kalinin (now Tver) and then buried in mass graves in Mednoye, an act which became known as the Katyn Massacre.

[citation needed] After 1990, the complex was given back to the Russian Orthodox Church, and in 1995 it opened again as a functioning monastery, which it still is today.