Zheltovodsky Makariev monastery is located on the left Bank of the Volga river near the village of Makarievo, 100 km to the east of Nizhny Novgorod. The most convenient road is on the right Bank, and you have to go to the monastery by ferry from the village of Lyskovo. Approaching to monastery, you see beautiful white stone walls reflected in the waters of the Volga.
Makariev monastery was founded in 1435 by the monk Makariy from Nizhny Novgorod. He built a wooden Church and cells on the floodplain meadows of the Volga near old riverbed, called Yellow water. In 1439, a Tatar detachment ravaged and burned the monastery, and Makariy was taken prisoner. Soon he was released, but the Tatars demanded not to restore the monastery to its former place, so together with other monks, he went to the Kostroma region and founded the Makaryevsky Unzhensky monastery there.
Makarievsky Zheltovodsky (Yellow water) monastery was recreated on the same site only in 1620 by the monk of the Tetyushinsky monastery, Avraamiy from Murom. At first, wooden Trinity and Assumption churches were built here, and by 1657 a very beautiful monastery was formed on the Bank of the Volga.
In 1627, almost immediately after the revival of the monastery, Avraamiy received a Charter from Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich for the right to collect customs duties. Makarievsky monastery was located in a very convenient place at the intersection of trade routes, where ships sailed down the Volga and Oka, as well as those that dragged boatmen upstream.
On the day of memory of Abraham, July 25, the monks began to hold an trade fair at the walls of the monastery. In 1641, the Makariy fair was officially approved. In 1722, Tsar Peter I personally came to see the Makariev fair. In those years, it was already the largest fair in Russia and one of the largest in Europe. The fair was located on both banks of the Volga, although the main one was on the Makariy side.
In 1816, due to fires, the fair was moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where special pavilions were built for it. After that, the monastery began to fall into disrepair, especially in the second half of the 19th century, when the water threatened to wash away the banks and destroy all the buildings of the monastery. Nowadays, the monastery is completely restored and many pilgrims come here.
