Vitebsk. Holy Trinity Markov Monastery.

According to legend, the founder of the monastery was a pious man named Mark, who built a chapel on his plot of land and retired for pious deeds. Then like-minded people began to join him. When exactly Mark lived, and in what year he embarked on the path of hermitism, legend says nothing. However, the true name of the founding father is undoubtedly evidenced by his entry in the monastery Synodikon, in which Mark was called a monk and placed at the head of his pious workers and founders of the monastery.

The main restorer and founder of the Markov Monastery was Prince Lev Samuil Oginsky (in 1633-1642). His name, as the first of the restorers, is recorded in the monastery synodicon next to the monk Mark; and then the names of his father Bogdan and wife Sophia are added. The Markov Monastery for men reached its heyday in the 17th century. It had five churches, a chapel, a fraternal building, a bell tower, and an almshouse. At the beginning of the 17th century, in 1633, Prince Lev-Samuil Bogdanovich Oginsky, the tiun of Troitsky, erected a wooden church in the name of the Life-Giving Trinity on the site of the chapel built by the elder Mark when the monastery was founded. In 1642, by a charter of deed, Lev-Samuil Oginsky and his wife secured the Markov estate with a manor for the monastery.

In 1690, a cathedral church in honor of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity and monastic cells were built. The church had an open gallery with wooden carved columns around it and was a remarkable creation of wooden Belarusian architecture. Another monastery church in honor of the Protection of the Mother of God, built in 1651 as a wooden church, was rebuilt in stone by Abbot Iakinf Pelkinsky in 1760. In addition to the stone church, a stone bell tower was built - initially two-tiered, then another tier was added to it, as well as houses for the abbot and monks, numerous outbuildings.

In 1812, during Napoleon’s invasion, the monastery was plundered, but the monks managed to save the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God and hide it in the forest.

New difficult times for the Markov Monastery came after the October Revolution. In 1918, the Bolsheviks closed the monastery, and in 1919 they handed it over to the Cheka. In 1922, an orphanage was organized in the former Markov Monastery. A year later, the orphanage was closed, and its buildings were first handed over to local Komsomol members, and then to the police. As a result, of all the temples in the monastery, only the Kazan (former Pokrovskaya) Church survived. The ancient bell tower was demolished in the late 1970s. In the post-war period, the Kazan Church was the only functioning Orthodox church not only in Vitebsk, but also in the entire district.

On November 23, 2000, by decision of the Holy Synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, the monastery was restored. In addition to the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God itself, only small residential and utility buildings were preserved. A library and Sunday school were opened at the monastery.

The main relic of the Vitebsk Holy Trinity Markov Monastery is the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Kazan. The relics of many saints are also kept in the temple.