Valaam | Валаам (4K)

The Valaam Monastery is located on the island of Valaam, an island that is part of an archipelago in Lake Ladoga, the biggest lake in Europe. The date of its establishment is not known, but modern historians estimate that it was founded sometime towards the end of the 1300s. The monastery changed hands multiple times during the course of history due to its proximity to Finland and its strategic location in the lake. The monastery was attacked in the 1500s by Lutherans from Sweden and it was left abandoned for more than one hundred years in 1611, being restored only in 1812. Read more: (In Russian)