Bleisure: a walk through a forest of golden bulbs

Before reaching the monastery of the Trinity of Saint Sergius, in the village of Sergiev Posad, a good hour's drive from Moscow, the Bleisure escapade begins with a stopover on the Abramtsevo estate, former artists' colony where Turgenev and Gogol made their homes. Then, in the 1870s, writers gave way to painters when the estate, with its pond, river and forest, passed into the hands of the Mamontovs, a wealthy family of patrons who made their fortune in the railways. Serov, Polenov, Repine, Nesterov: these landscape and symbolist painters created studios in the surrounding woods that resembled old Russian isbas, surrounded by infinite serenity. Today, you can admire their work in the rooms of the main house, barely disturbed by the creaking of the fragrant parquet floor, before discovering the chapel built by ceramist Mikhail Vrubel, a little jewel of the Modern styleRussian Art Nouveau.

After this bucolic stopover, you cross dense birch forests to reach the Saint-Serge monastery, with its bell towers glittering in gold and others in starry blue. It's a plunge into a distant past, that of the 14th century.^e It was not until the 16th century that a hermit, the future Saint Sergius, built himself a hut among the fir trees and bears. It wasn't until the 16th^e century that Ivan the Terrible replaced the wooden chapel of the hermit - who made as many disciples as he did miracles - with the delicate Church of the Dormition, with sloping white walls topped by a golden bulb. a flame that rises to the heavens. For five centuries, the monastery was constantly embellished with the addition of the Cathedral of the Assumption, which became the final resting place of Boris Godunov, son of Ivan the Terrible, before it was rebuilt in the 17th century.^e In the 16th century, Peter the Great built a palace in front of which a Baroque baldachin still houses a spring of water said to be miraculous.

As the seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate, the monastery now features on the Unesco World Heritage Site. In the aisles, young popes in long black robes are still busy learning the art of devotion. Under wisps of incense, in the light of fine yellow candles burning near the iconostases, a capella chants of absolute purity rise up, evoking an eternal Russia.