The official opening of the exhibition "Russian Presence in the Holy Land" will take place in the St. Petersburg House of Journalists on December 18, 2024. The opening program includes the premiere of the documentary and animated film "Ascent to Jerusalem" (12+).
The Synodal Department for Church-Society and Media Relations will organize a series of exhibitions "Russian Presence in the Holy Land" in 2024-2025 in four Russian cities. The project is dedicated to the tradition of pilgrimage to the holy sites of modern Israel, Palestine and Syria.
The exhibition in St. Petersburg will feature authentic museum items (photographs, rare book editions, coins, lithographs and icons from private collections), as well as multimedia. Russian Russian Russian Russian pilgrims, the projects of the Russian authorities and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission for the construction of Russian farmsteads and temples, known today as "Russian Palestine", also paid great attention to the image and life of Russian pilgrims.
Russian Russian Presence in the Holy Land exhibition will feature each item as a testimony to the spiritual path of our ancestors and introduce them to the history of Russian pilgrimage. The exhibition is based on unique authentic photographs taken by RDM photographers in Jerusalem and copies of photographs from the collection of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society.
Kirill Vakh, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Deputy head of the Scientific Section of the IPPO, historian and archivist, is in charge of the formation of the exposition.
"The key feature of the exhibition will be a story about the history of stereophotography in the Holy Land, which is both a photographic chronicle of the life and everyday life of the Holy Land of the XIX century and an example of the most popular souvenir," the historian said.
Especially for the project, the Synodal Department for Church-Society Relations and the Media, in partnership with the Thomas Cinema Film Studio, created the documentary and animated film "Ascent to Jerusalem" (12+). This is a film study of the theme of pilgrimage, which unites two sides of interest in the Holy Land at once: scientific and spiritual. The film will be presented to the guests by the filmmakers: producer Igor Meshchan and director Alexandra Andronova.

The exhibition "Russian Presence in the Holy Land" in St. Petersburg will last until the end of 2024. Then the exposition will be transported to Arzamas and Sarov.
The project is being implemented with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives.
Project partners: the magazine "Thomas", the film studio "Thomas Cinema", the International Public Organization Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, the Orthodox Television Foundation, the First Public Orthodox TV Channel "Spas", the radio station "Vera" (ANO Information Center for Radio Broadcasting, Art and Culture "Faith, Hope, Love") and others.