Holy Martyr Grand Princess Elizabeth Convent

This extraordinary ensemble on the outskirts of Minsk including four churches, a shop, crafts facilities and other buildings was founded in 1999 as a centre for over 70 Orthodox nuns, novices and lay labourers who’ve all given their lives to providing spiritual and social help to the sick and suffering. Also involved in a tireless amount of outreach work as well as running a farmstead for recovering alcoholics and other people down on their luck, the women oversee an enormous amount of activity at the convent.

The complex is open to the public with tours available in English, taking in several of the things taking place inside the buildings including a number of workshops making stained glass, icons and other works of art that as well as help decorate the convent and its four churches also give young people new skills and, through the sale of many of the things they make, a valuable source of income. 

The icon workshops are particularly fascinating and include not only new works of art but a small department who renovate damaged icons from Belarus and beyond. The churches can also be visited, perhaps the most interesting being the Church of St. Nicolas the Wonder Worker, where the women of the convent read from the Psalter around the clock in hour-long shifts in order to save the world.

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The Temple of God's Body (Corpus Christi church)

The grandiose temple was built in 1584-1593. It was used as a church of the Jesuit monastery designed by the Italian architect Giovanni Maria Bernardoni.

Church of All Saints

Such temples are built once in a thousand years. Therefore, the construction of templates based on stereotypes was inadmissible for the creators of the complex.

Catholic Church of St. Andrew

There are suggestions that the church was consecrated in the name of St. Andrew Bobola, but representatives of the Roman Catholic Church of Belarus believe that the church bears the name of the apostle Andrew.