On Chelyuskintsev Square, near Sovetskaya in Yaroslavl, stands an ancient men's monastery. Its history begins in 1616, when Russia was liberated from the Polish invaders.
Several years before that, there was a severe epidemic in the city, and local residents together with warriors prayed for recovery in a small chapel that stood on this site. Soon the plague ceased, and in gratitude the townspeople began building wooden churches in honor of the Icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, before which they had prayed, and Saints Cyril and Athanasius of Alexandria. The latter were chosen for a reason: in Orthodoxy they were revered as defenders of Christianity from heresy, while the Catholic faith professed by the Polish invaders was considered precisely a heresy at that time.
At the end of the 17th century, stone churches, monastery buildings, and monks' cells began to be erected on the site of the wooden churches. They have survived to this day, although in Soviet times the Kirillo-Afanasievsky Monastery, like most religious buildings, was used for entirely different purposes - the administration of a furniture factory was located here.
Only in 2005 was the monastery returned once again to the jurisdiction of the church. Five years later, it was possible to restore it somewhat and resume services. At the beginning of 2011, the Icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, which had been kept there even before the revolution, was returned to the monastery.
