The Monastery of our Saviour was founded in the middle of the fourteenth century by the princes of Suzdal and Nizhniy Novgorod. It was excellently situated on the high left bank of the Kamenka, to the north from city. An account of the life of the Monastery 's first abbot Yevfimiy says, that he built a stone Church there at this very early stage. It's author, a monk by the name of Grigoriy lived in the sixteenth century, when the Monastery had several new stone Churches.
In the beginning of 16-th century the Abbot Yevfimiy, the Monastery 's founder, was glorified by the Orthodox Church. By the fifteenth century the Monastery possessed numerous lands, villages and hamlets in various parts of Central Russia, which had been endowed by princes and rich boyars. The Monastery built a large number of new stone buildings in the first half of the sixteenth century.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Polish invaders used it as a stronghold and surrounded it with a wooden stockade. This was replaced by new wooden fortifications with nine towers in 1660, and some twenty years later the present stone walls were built with twenty towers and a total perimeter of 1,312 yards. Since the Monastery possessed 10,300 serfs at this time the construction of such a huge stronghold was well within its means.
Standing on the high left bank of the Kamenka its red walls and towers can be seen from a long way off. There is a mighty twelve-sided tower on the Southwest corner and the domes of the Monastery Churches are visible behind the walls. The whole magnificent panorama has a truly epic quality about it and the Monastery ensemble fits in perfectly with the surrounding countryside. Although the walls and towers create an impression of tremendous strength there is nothing gloomy, or threatening about them. On the contrary they seem to radiate the poetic splendour so typical of Russian seventeenth-century art. The unknown builder of this Monastery town combined the skills of a fortification expert and pure architect rivalling the famous sixteenth-century civic architect Feodor Kon.

The defensive character of the Monastery is immediately apparent even from a general view of the ensemble. It can be seen in the row of loopholes running along the fortified parapet. The design of the walls and towers varies according to their location. By the steep banks of the river where assault would have been difficult the walls are lower and the towers more squat, whereas on the vulnerable south side where the ground is flat they are much higher. At the same time the increased dimensions of the walls and towers facing the town were also influenced by purely artistic considerations. The south wall formed part of the Monastery 's main facade and the architect expended much skill and ingenuity on it. This applies particularly to the massive entrance tower. The majestic importance of this huge square building, about 70 feet high, is accentuated by the low arched entrances, which look as though they are resting on stubby posts and seem to be weighed down by the massive tower. The tower occupies a commanding position in the Monastery complex, and is one of its main buildings. It is placed at an angle to the road and adjoining walls. The lower part up to the top of the adjoining walls is extremely plain. Its surface is broken only by two icon niches, a number of circular loopholes and the rusticated corners. The upper half of the tower is very lavishly decorated however. First comes a row of slightly elongated niches. This is followed by a band of loopholes framed with elaborate ogee-shaped surrounds. Above these is a wide cornice of niches decorated with tiles and, higher still, another row of loopholes topped by a decorative arcade band with closely spaced small columns and pointed kokoshniks, decorating the slits of the upper defensive platform. The decoration stands out clearly against the red walls of the tower, which set off the white ornament particularly well.
The tower with its pyramidal roof stands almost in the centre of the southern facade. Its importance is emphasised by the polygonal corner towers, which are decorated much more simply. They have round loopholes and only those on the upper defensive platform are framed with ogee-shaped surrounds forming a kind of decorative coronet. The impression of slender height which these towers produce is emphasised by a barely perceptible tapering which makes them look higher than they really are.
The towers on the east side of the Monastery along which the road runs are more lavishly decorated than those on the west wall. Their corners are adorned with broad pilaster strips which compress the red surfaces of the walls and make the towers look more slender. The towers on the west side facing the open countryside are the plainest of all. Their wide indented slits are completely devoid of ornament. Thus we can see, that the adornments of the ensemble was concentrated mainly on the side facing the town. The different shapes of the towers: round, square, polygonal and their varying styles of decoration combined to form a very picturesque, impressive ensemble.
The Monastery could be seen from far off, dominating the town and its old architectural centre, the Kremlin. Built at a time, when the heart of Russia was no longer threatened by foreign invaders it was never actually used for defensive purposes.

If we pass through the dark archway of the main entrance tower, we would faced with another gateway in the lower tier of the Church of the Annunciation, whose oblong bulk conceals the main buildings of the Monastery . There was probably a small courtyard here, enclosed on two sides by inner walls and on the third by the south front of the Holy Gates. On the right and left there is a good view of the fortified walls from the inside, with their high arcade, supporting the covered parapet of the defensive platform.
The exact date of the Annunciation Church is not known. It is mentioned as being a stone Church in an inventory for 1628-1629, but some of its features are similar to the early sixteenth-century bell-tower. It consists of a square main body with a porch at the west end, and elongated apses on the east side. The Church roof was altered later. Originally it had two tent-shaped towers, rising above ogee-shaped zakomaras, and linking the building with the tent-shaped roofs of the fortified towers.
The adornments of the outer walls is rich and varied. Beneath the broad cornice with a row of squat rounded balusters there are two symmetrically placed windows with structured surrounds and an icon niche between them. The walls of the Church porch are particularly effective. The porch has large windows with surrounds like deeply recessed portals, which may be a copy of the portals in the thirteenth-century Cathedral of the Nativity.
Facing the west wall of the Church porch are another three large windows, each of which has a structured ogee-shaped surround. The inner frame is shaped like two small arches with a pendant in between them. This motif may have been inspired by the double and triple windows, found in twelfth-century Vladimir and Suzdal architecture.

Beyond this second pair of gates, one of which is now blocked up, lie the oldest buildings in the Monastery. There are: the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in the centre, the large bell-tower on the right, and the refectory Church of the Assumption on the left.
These buildings mark, as it were, the second inner and main courtyard.
Beyond it were the monks' cells, many of which were built of stone as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Behind them stretched vast areas of land, used for domestic purposes.
The history of the main buildings is somewhat unclear. Their exact dates are difficult to determine precisely. The more recent additions are incorporated motifs from the old buildings.

This applies to the bell-tower, which belongs to two different periods. The earliest section is the nine-sided column of the original bell-tower, or, to be more precise, the pillar-like Church, surmounted by a belfry of the type, which we can see also in the Convent of the Intercession.
Evidently both these buildings belong to the same period - the first decade of the sixteenth century.
Above the octagonal socle stood the tiny Church of the Birth of John the Baptist. It may be connected with the birth of Ivan IV in 1530, and could well have been built on funds provided by the Grand Prince.
The walls of the Church and bell-tower were disfigured by later repairs and the addition of new windows, but its original adornments seems to have been plain as it is today. The surfaces of the lower tier were embellished by the insertion of pointed kokoshniks. The intertwined kokoshniks on the Northeast surface of the socle are particularly interesting.
The narrow, slit-like embrasures of the windows on the second tier, which contained the Church, alternate with broad surrounds in the form of portals, like those which we can see in the gateway Church of the Annunciation.
A third tier contained the bells. Possibly it was rebuilt once. Above its broad flattened arches rose the tent-shaped roof.
This building and the similar one in the Convent of the Intercession are of great interest to scholars as predecessors of the famous tent-shaped Church of the Ascension in the former village of Kolomenskoye, now in the bounds of Moscow.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries another building was added to the bell-tower. Its upper tier, consisted of an arcade with three arches on short faceted pillars. The first arch was built in 1599 and the remaining two in 1691. This type of building originated in early Pskov architecture and was later developed by Moscow and Rostov builders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The walls were decorated in the same free, asymmetrical style, that we can observe in the gateway Church of the Convent of the Intercession: the pilaster strips and the horizontal bands of niches, kokoshniks, balusters and brickwork seem to have been placed entirely at random. In between the bell-tower and the arcade there is a clock tower with a tent-shaped spire. Interestingly enough it contains features similar to those of the clock-tower in the Convent of the Intercession - the same circular branch piece evidently intended for the clock and the same rosette beside it. It is possible that the builders copied these details from the older building in the Intercession Convent. The tent-shaped spire of the clock-tower was balanced by two similar spires above the belfry. These spires corresponded to those on the gateway Church, producing the characteristic interplay of architectural forms that linked the separate buildings into a single whole.

This unity is also found in the refectory Church of the Assumption, built in 1525, almost directly opposite the bell-tower.
Its faceted apses face the Cathedral courtyard, and are decorated with bands of ogee-shaped niches and kokoshniks, which also include a row of narrow arched windows.
The square main body of the Church rises above the central apse and is crowned by tiers of kokoshniks, around the base of the short octagon, that carries the tent-shaped spire. The side apses were originally surmounted by two smaller tent-shaped spires, which probably had similar tiers of kokoshniks around their octagonal bases. This composition was evidently copied in the bell-tower and gateway Church, with their tent-shaped spires.
Later buildings, erected on the right and left of the east wall, obscure most part of the Church. The main body of the refectory stretches back into the monastery courtyard and cannot be seen from the central square. It consists of a large hall once, decorated with frescoes, but now considerably changed by nineteenth-century alterations, standing on a lower storey, used for domestic purposes. Its west wall is particularly fine with a cornice of balusters, and pointed brick, that stands out against the plain walls with their simple arched windows, arranged symmetrically without any decoration.

The bell-tower and the refectory provide, as it were, side wings for the huge five-domed sixteenth-century Cathedral of the Transfiguration, decorated with a somewhat plain decorative arcade band. In the seventeenth century its outer walls were painted with frescoes. The main south and west walls seem to have been designed originally to have paintings, because their second tiers were given broad windows, placed in the decorative arcade band, instead of the usual narrow, slit windows.
The Southeast corner of the Cathedral is adjoined by a charming chapel, erected earlier it, between 1507 and 1511. This tiny chapel without pillars, erected over the grave of Abbot Yevfimiy, was the Monastery 's first stone building.
Its square body may have been adjoined by a small Church porch on the west wall.
The large Cathedral was built on to the chapel in the middle or late sixteenth century, when the chapel was dedicated to Yevfimiy.
The same thing happened about this time in Pereslavl-Zalessky, where a similar small Church built by Vasiliy III over the grave of the local saint Nikita, became the chapel of a grandiose Cathedral, built in 1564 in the Monastery of Saint Nicetas.
The small, pillarless Churches of this type, which appeared in the trading and artisan settlements around Moscow in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries have a simple, homely atmosphere.
The similarity between the exteriors of the Cathedral and the chapel suggests that the latter was redecorated when the Cathedral was built. In contrast to the bell-tower and refectory, which reflect the spirit of lively innovation so typical of Russian sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art, the cathedral conformed to earlier hallowed traditions like all sixteenth-century large monasteries and kremlins. The overall result lacked the majesty and unity of the twelfth-and thirteenth-century buildings. Here we find the traditional pilaster strips, very skimpy in relation to the building's dimensions, the deeply recessed portals with carved ornamental capitals, an over-refined decorative arcade band, and the cherished five-domed roof, but they form a mere dead shell.
It is interesting to compare the Cathedral with the west vestibule added in the seventeenth century, which delights the eye with its lively interplay of rich and varied embellishment and the interesting effects of light and shade on its walls.
The south narthex was badly disfigured, when it was included in a new Church porch, surrounding the Cathedral on three sides, and given a new north chapel in 1866.
The Cathedral's interior with its four broadly planted large pillars and deeply recessed apses is just as traditional as the exterior. The well-lit body of the Cathedral impresses one with its size and cold dignity.
It remained without wall paintings for a long time after it was built. Judging by the entries in the Monastery inventory it must have had a very original appearance. The white walls were covered with icons in glittering mounts of gold, silver and enamel and rich, silk-embroidered shrouds - the gifts of wealthy pilgrims.
The frescoes date back to 1689, but were renewed in 1865 and 1877 and have unfortunately not yet been cleaned and restored. Even in their present condition they are of considerable interest because the nineteenth-century renovators simply repainted them without altering them. These early frescoes were the work of a team of painters under the direction of two gifted masters, Guriy Nikitin and Sila Savin.
One is immediately struck by the fact that the frescoes combine two different artistic styles. Some of them are composed on a large majestic scale, whereas others are full of the minute detail and complex composition characteristic of icon-painting. In some cases the artists seem to have been unable to adjust their painting to the comparatively small, low interior. Beneath the fresco of the Lord of Hosts on the dome, they painted huge, elongated archangels on the narrow strips of wall between the windows. The same tendency is strikingly illustrated by the excessively tall figures of other archangels on the altar arch and the apostles on the vaulting arches. There are also very large pictures of the twelve Church festivals on the vaults.
As a whole, however, the frescoes are very impressive. There is a beautiful one on the upper section of the central apse in praise of the Virgin Mary, showing her sitting on a throne with Christ in her arms. The painting on the walls and pillars consists of four comparatively narrow bands, the lower one depicting the acts of the apostles and the remaining three showing scenes of Christ's life taken from the Gospels and portrayed with an extraordinary wealth of detail. Each scene is crowded with figures and almost merges into the next one. For the benefit of the congregation the painters added lengthy descriptions. The paintings look like a gaily coloured, patterned tapestry curling over the sides of the windows. The artists' skill is apparent in the varied lines and colours of the robes on the large figures in the sanctuary, for example, the archdeacons round the altar and the Fathers of the Church in the central apse.
The original frescoes evidently possessed a richness of colour and form, which has now been exaggerated and distorted by the nineteenth-century painters. It is interesting that the lower tiers of painting on the surfaces of the pillars facing the altar, show the founders of the Romanov dynasty, the tsars Mikhail and Alexey, as saints with haloes. Here also painted are: the biblical kings David and Solomon, Constantine the Great, who has been named the "Thirteenth Apostle" in the Eastern Church, his mother Saint Helena, and the Russian glorified princes Vladimir, Boris and Gleb. We also can find Grand Prince Vsevolod III here.
This feature can be traced back to the fresco painting in the great Moscow Cathedrals, for example, the 1508 paintings in the Cathedral of the Annunciation.
In contrast to the cold dignity of the interior of the Cathedral, one is struck by the cosy atmosphere inside the Saint Yevfimiy's chapel. It is covered by a cylindrical vault, in the centre of which is the dome drum with four narrow windows. The frescoes appear to have been painted at the same time, as those of the Cathedral in 1689, and were also renovated in the nineteenth century. There are figures of the apostles on the apse and archangels on the arch, who are particularly conspicuous here because of their size.
The frescoes on the other walls are devoted mainly to the life of Saint Yevfimiy. One extremely interesting scene on the north wall shows Yevfimiy supervising the building of the Monastery with a plan in his hands. Architects did not actually start building from plans until the end of the seventeenth century, the period of Russian Baroque. Evidence of this period can also be seen in the buildings portrayed in the frescoes, which are full of ornamental motifs found in Moscow architecture of that time. It should be remembered, however, that very little trace of these motifs is found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Suzdalian architecture. The painters clearly knew about them from Russian buildings and West European prints, which suggests that they were not local artists.

In 1642 Prince Dimitri Pozharsky, who led the army, which finally routed the Polish and Lithuanian invaders, was buried on the east side of the Cathedral opposite the altar.