Assumption Cathedral and Monastery of the town-island of Sviyazhsk

Ivan the Terrible needed a forward base to take Kazan, so in 1551 he planted the fortress town of Sviyazhsk where the Sviyaga and Shchuka flow into the Volga. From this island outpost the conquest of the Kazan Khanate was launched, and the Assumption Monastery that followed embodied Moscow's political and missionary push eastward. Its cathedral guards a rare, near-complete cycle of Eastern Orthodox frescoes. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2017.