Sergiev Posad is called as a pearl of the Golden Ring, a city rich in history, the center of Russian Orthodoxy located 50 kilometers from Moscow to Yaroslavl highway.
Sergiev Posad was named after Saint Sergey, known as Sergey Radonezhsky, who was born in Radonezh (a city situated next to Zagorsk). In the 14th century he founded a convent there and it became one of the biggest and most magnificent convents in Russia. Nowadays the convent is called as Lavra ("the main and most important monastery") and is considered to be the "Russian Vatican".
One of the main sightseeings of the town of Sergiev Posad is St. Trinity Cathedral. The wooden monastery built by Sergii and his followers was razed by the Tartars shortly after his death, but his tomb survived and, in 1422, the year of his canonization, work began on the construction of the Trinity Cathedral. Although the Russian capital moved to St. Petersburg, the Trinity Monastery remained the centre of the Russian Church until 1920, when the monastery was closed by the Bolshevik government, and the monks were sent off to labour camps.
Stalin permitted the reopening of the monastery as part of victory celebrations in 1946, and it was the seat of the Russian Patriarch from then until 1988, when the honour was bestowed on the more central Danilov Monastery.
