2. Kizhi is an island on Lake Onega in the Republic of Karelia (Medvezhyegorsky District), with a beautiful ensemble of wooden churches, chapels and houses. It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Russia and a World Heritage Site.

4. The island is about 7 km long and 0.5 km wide. It is surrounded by about 5,000 other islands, most of which are very small—some of them are about 2x2 meters, though some are as big as 35 km long. Kizhi Pogost, as the whole area is known in Russian, is an old settlement which united more than 100 villages in the 16th century.

5. The jewel of its architecture is the 22-domed Transfiguration church, with a fine baroque iconostasis. The nine-domed Intercession church was built nearby in 1764, and a belltower was added in 1874. The most impressive thing about these structures is that they were erected without any nails or other metal ties--even the joints were made from wood.

6. The erection of the Bell Tower in 1864 completed the Kizhi Architectural Ensemble. It is a final chord of the Ensemble and emphases the beauty of the churches. THE BELL TOWER

7. The Archangel Michael chapel dated by the end of the 17th – the beginning of the 18th century was transferred to the Kizhi Museum in 1961. Its silhouette is slender and delicate, small windows are high above the ground. To make the structure original they made double details: double slopes of the roof, double “collars” on the tent-roofed belfry, double onion-shaped cupolas, double windows on the Western facade. The chapel was used mainly for private and collective praying and funeral ceremonies.

8. The Lasarus Resurrection church was built 5 centuries ago, when social development was rather low. Lasarus characterised people living at that time on the shores of Onega Lake as “savage heathens eating raw fish and meat, screaming and jumping wildly, when they performed their ritual rites”. THE LASARUS RESURRECTION CHURCH

9. The Kizhi museum has more than 90 pieces of the traditional wooden architecture including the gem of Russian North – the architectural ensemble of the Kizhi Pogost that is under the auspices of UNESCO. We can boast over 35 000 of unique artifacts of history and culture. They are very special icons, items of peasantry life – objects of applied arts of the peoples of Karelia, carpenters’ tools, traditional musical instruments, the local folklore and poetry, documents of local history and other valuable things. The world famous Kizhi Museum is one of the largest out-door museums in Russia – was founded in 1966. It is situated on one of 1650 islands of Lake Onega in 68 km from Petrozavodsk, the capital of the Republic of Karelia. During 40 years of museum’s existence, this popular object of the Russian and international cultural tourism has presented the traditional wooden architecture as well as the material and spiritual culture of the peoples living in Karelia – Vepsians, Karelians and Russians.

10. Kizhi in winter Kizhi in autumn