Verkhoturye – the Oldest Town in the Urals
A small Ural town of Verkhoturye, located at a distance of 340 kilometers from Yekaterinburg, is considered one of the oldest towns in the Urals, its spiritual and religious capital. No pilgrimage route bypasses the town with more than seven thousand inhabitants. The town is famous for the abundance of churches and monasteries. It was founded in 1597 on the site of the old Vogul settlement of Neromkar. The Russian vaivodes erected a fortress with a customs on the Babinsky Road, which connected then Russia and Siberia, and that served as the nucleus for future Verkhoturye.
The first St. Nicholas Monastery (Nikolayevsky Monastery) appeared in Verkhoturye in 1604. A century later the relics of St. Simeon were transferred to the monastery, due to which the flow of pilgrims was constantly growing. The Cathedral of Exaltation of the Holy Cross appeared in Verkhoturye in the twentieth century. It was built for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty and became the third largest temple in Russia (after the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow Cathedral in Novocherkassk). Grigori Rasputin often visited Verkhoturye. It was probably him who "lobbied" the construction of such a grand temple in a small Ural town. Locals were also waiting to see Nicholas II here, but his visit was prevented by World War I.
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