The first sites on the territory of Russia that were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1990 included St. Petersburg's historical center, the Moscow Kremlin with neighboring Red Square and the architectural complex of the Kizhi Pogost.

The Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord on an island, which has long since become Kizhi's main landmark, has spawn the area's greatest attraction. It is a wooden church with 22 domes that rises high above the surrounding buildings and can be seen from boats sailing to the island.   

In the early 18^th century, the first church building burnt down after a lighting strike and the church that was built in its place in 1714 has survived to the present day. The name of the architect is unknown but there are two legends associated with the creation of this unique church. 

According to one legend, the church was built from drawings by Emperor Peter the Great, who while sailing on Lake Onega stopped on Kizhi Island and saw a pile of cut trees. 

He wondered why so many trees had been cut and made sketches of a future church.

The other legend mentions a craftsman, Nestor, who after building the church hurled his axe far into Lake Onega, saying: "There has never been and never will be a church like this."  

The Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord has no façade and looks lovely from all sides. Its 22 large and small domes look silvery from afar as they reflect sunlight in fair weather.

However, there is no silver on the domes as the church was built entirely of wood. As the common saying goes, it was built with an axe without using a single nail. This is not entirely true, though: nails were used to build the church's 22 domes which cascade down almost as low as the ground  

The architects, whose only tool was the axe, were well aware of the properties of wood that could serve decorative purposes, so they intentionally used aspen to cover the domes. Aspen is easy to work with to achieve a required shape, it does not crack and in time becomes mirror-like, reflecting the ever-changing colors of the northern sky. 

The Kizhi Pogost also features the Intercession of the Mother of God Church, a belfry and the fencing around the pogost.  

The Russian North features churches of two types - to be attended in winter and in summer. Winter churches were of distinct horizontal type - low and with a solid basement; and summer churches were more vertical-light and soaring into the air

The Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord soars upward on its 22 domes as high as 37 meters, that is, it is two meters higher than Notre-Dame Cathedral. It has no heating as it was intended for liturgies during the warm spell when people came for a service from the remote corners of the parish. By contrast, the low Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God with a solid basement was built as a winter church to conduct services from October 1 through Easter.   

The Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord is taller than the neighboring Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God and the 30-meter high belfry that was built in the second half of the 19^th century.

In addition to being a unique wooden architectural landmark and an outstanding work of carpentry, the Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in Kizhi is a unique restoration project which is being carried out In Front of the Whole World (a self-styled project launched on the Kizhi Museum website.)  

Anyone can visit the website, to which cameras of the Kizhi Museum transport images in real time, and watch the ongoing restoration work online

Throughout restoration the church will be propped up by a metal frame from the inside, while the upper section has been lifted above the foundation with heavy jacks.   

The restoration workers take out lower logs and other components of the church one by one to examine and replace them with new ones if necessary.  

However, the oldest wooden building in the Kizhi Protected Nature Area is the Church of the Raising of Lazarus. According to legend, it was built by reverend monk Lazarus, who lived 105 years and deceased in 1391. The church was the first building of the Muromsky Monastery that was later founded on the eastern bank of Lake Onega. In the 1960s the church was taken apart and carried on rafts to Kizhi Island where it was made part of the museum.   

Part of a wooden church interior in the Russian north is a specific ceiling construction called nebo [heaven], which was created by builders in imitation of the painted domes of stone churches.   

The 16-section ceiling with successive rows of seraphs, cherubs, angels and patriarchs that initially decorated the Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord was lost at the end of the Great Patriotic War [1941-1945]. However, there is a place in the Russian north where one can still see a stirringly blue handmade ceiling, or heaven.

Some traces of legendary Ancient Rus, Kenozerye [Kenozero area], which we only know from fairy-tales and heroic eras, has miraculously been preserved a thousand kilometers north of Moscow, amid thick woods and marshes.

The center of this primeval world, Lake Kenozero, is one of many large lakes that extend many kilometers along the left bank of the Onega River. In the old days, this chain of lakes, which are connected with one another and the Onega River by smaller rivers and channels, was part of the route that the Novgorod merchants used to get to the White Sea and behind the Ural Mountains. 

Kenozerye's distinctive features that have survived were being shaped as this water route gained in importance. The Slavic tillers who moved here mixed with the local Finno-Ugric tribes, as a result of which Kenozerye became a unique home for both Christian and heathen cultures.    

Local people, who had never been kept in serfdom, had organized life in their villages and the surrounding space in keeping with their perception of the world: they managed to preserve their holy groves that were still pagan at the time and also put up wayside crosses, as well as build famous Kenozerye chapels with heaven painted on the ceilings.   

The painted heaven on the ceilings of northern chapels and churches are similar to the stone church murals that are traditional for both Russia and Byzantium. But the masters in the Russian north did not just copy the techniques of painting heaven on stone domes but adapted it for wooden churches.   

The painted "heaven" is a symbol of the celestial sphere complete with the stars, the sun, the moon and the kingdom of God. Its basic structure in the form of eight, twelve or sixteen facets with a medallion at the center invokes the sun with rays

By painting Christ, Mother of God, angels, apostles, patriarchs and saints in the heavens, the painters helped worshippers put their mind and soul into prayer.

Kenozersky National Park possesses a unique collection of 16 complexes depicting heaven, the majority of which can be seen in churches while the rest are on display at the park's museum exhibits.  

The chapels and churches that have survived in Kenozerye were mostly built at local people's request and wishes. Peasants were the main requestors for paintings. As a result, the paintings of heaven in Kenozerye acquired one of their most specific features - they depicted the patron saints of local peasants or of those who ordered the construction of the churches.

This type of the unique heaven with a signature can be found at the St. Nicholas the Wonderworker Chapel in the village of Ust-Poche: instead of the traditional crucifix on its eastern facet, there is the image of St. Nicholas to whom the chapel is dedicated. At the requestor's cherished desire, in addition to the figure of St. Nicholas, the painter embodied scenes from the saint's life on the chapel's vault.    

One "braveheart" dared to violate the rules of iconography and left his signature on the facet next to the one depicting St. Nicholas:

"This heaven was painted in 1881 by painter Fyodor Zakharov Iok, born in the Olonetskaya Guberniya, Kargopolsky Uyezd, Mishkovskaya Volost, the village of Bolshogo Konya, 17 years old"   

Kenozersky National Park is neither a museum nor a nature reserve in the commonly accepted meaning of these words, because people live here, observing a lifestyle that was established by their predecessors long ago. They revere holy groves that are associated with pagan sacrifices along with Orthodox sacred objects or places like crosses, chapels and churches. In these groves, locals never sing or pick flowers or collect firewood.

The local people never fail to attend and take care of the wooden churches that were built long ago during one day: they visit some chapels more often than others but invariably all of them, no matter how small or dilapidated the buildings are 

Could it be different, given that their predecessors did not act on orders from above? It was rather their will or wish that made them keep pagan groves, put up wayside crosses, build wooden chapels and decorate them with a painted heaven - all this is the core, the foundation of the entire Kenozerye world. 

It appears that Kenozerye residents understand better than many that you have to hold to your roots if you want your culture to survive.

Kizhi Island on Lake Onega is 68 kilometers from Petrozavodsk, Karelia's capital. You can get to Petrozavodsk by train from Moscow (14 or 15 hours) or St. Petersburg (seven or eight hours). There are also regular flights from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Petrozavodsk's Besovets Airport. Next (during the summer season from May through October), you will have to take a hydrofoil boat of the Kometa or Meteor types from Vodny Terminal in Petrozavodsk to Kizhi Island (about 75 minutes.)  

From January through March, hovercraft, snowmobiles, dog sleds or skis will help you get to the destination directly across the frozen lake.  

We recommend that before you start out on a journey to the island you look for useful tips for tourists on the Kizhi State History, Architecture and Ethnography Museum site.  http://kizhi.karelia.ru/

Kenozersky National Park lies on the border of the Plesetsky and Kargopolsky districts in the Arkhangelsk Region. Tourists from Moscow can get to Plesetsk Station by train (trains also pass through this station as they run to Arkhangelsk, Murmansk and St. Petersburg.); travel time is about 17 hours. Then you will have to change for a bus that will take you to the village of Vershinino; travel time is about 4 hours. By car, it will take four hours to cross through the park.

Before starting on a journey to Kenozerye, look for useful tips and guidance for tourists at the Kenozersky National Park website.  http://www.kenozero.ru/