Jerusalem: The Biography

* In 1658, Patriarch Nikon built the New Jerusalem Monastery in Istra, near Moscow, to promote the universal mission of Russian Orthodoxy and Autocracy. Its centrepiece was a replica of the actual Sepulchre in Jerusalem which is valuable since the original was destroyed in the fire of 1808. In 1818, before he ascended the throne, Nicholas I visited the New Jerusalem and was deeply moved, ordering its restoration. The Nazis damaged it but it is now being restored