The Saviour-Transfiguration Church in Polotsk to be considered as a nominee for the UNESCO World Heritage List

The celebrated church, revered throughout Belarus, stands within one of the oldest Orthodox monasteries of Eastern Europe, the Convent of Saint Euphrosyne of Polotsk (the Saviour-Euphrosyne Monastery) in Polotsk.

The stone church was built at the behest of Euphrosyne of Polotsk on the site of a wooden church, according to legend in 30 weeks. Two cruciform cells were also arranged here, one for the venerable abbess herself and one for her sister, the nun Eudokia.

The church is adorned with magnificent twelfth-century frescoes, the oldest surviving in Belarus. For a long time the original fresco painting lay hidden beneath later overpainting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but since the 1990s almost all the most ancient frescoes have been uncovered.

The founder of the convent is said to have been Princess Predslava, daughter of Prince Sviatoslav Vseslavich and great-granddaughter of the holy Prince Vladimir, Equal to the Apostles. She took the veil at the age of twelve under the name of Euphrosyne. Around 1125 Euphrosyne settled in the hamlet of Seltso near Polotsk, where she founded a convent for women beside the Church of the Saviour. Later two of Euphrosyne's kinswomen joined the convent: her own sister Gordislava and her cousin Zvenislava.

It was on the site of that very wooden Church of the Saviour that the Saviour-Transfiguration Church was raised.