Kizhi Island, on the island of Lake Onega, in the Republic of Karelia, in northwestern Russia. The island, whose name comes from kizharsuari ("sports island"), was located on the important 14th-century trade route from the city of Novgorod to the White Sea. The settlement grew around the Spasskiy Church founded in the mid-16th century. In the 17th century, the island served as a bulwark against the attacks of Sweden and Poland. During the reign of Catherine II the Great, there was a great revolt of farmers in Kizhi between 1769 and 1771.
Today the island is best known for its Museum of History and Architecture (opened in 1960), where former wooden warehouses, houses, a windmill, and several churches were restored and restored as part of an open museum. Preobranzhenskaya Church (Transfiguration) (1714), 37 meters high, with three levels and 22 cups, is often compared to St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square of Moscow. Preobranzhenskaya incorporates a collection of iconostases (each curtain or partition of doors and iconic floors used to separate the altar from the shrine in Eastern churches). Pokorovskaya Church (Intercession) (1764) has 10 cups, and its interior is decorated with sculptures made in the 17th and 18th centuries. ISt. Lazarus, the oldest church (built in 1390) in the Karelian Republic, was relocated to an open museum from the Monom Monastery in the Pudozh region and restored in 1961. Tourism is a major Kizhi industry.
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