The most southern and alpine Orthodox church in Russia is the Alania Monastery of the Dormition. The Monastery was found just recently but has already become one of the most important pilgrimage centers in North Ossetia. Initially, the monastery was opened in in Beslan, in the building where the hotel for train drivers used to be in 2000. A couple of years later, the Monastery was given a dilapidated Church of Wives-Myrrh Bearers in the Kurtatinsky (Fiagdon) Gorge, where an active temple construction was carried out in the second half of the 19th century. But Russia’s 20th century was not merciful to the churches ...
Now in five kilometers from the monastery, there is a chapel, where the main shrine of Ossetia and the whole northern Caucasus - the Iberian Mozdok icon of the Mother of God donated by Queen of Georgia Tamara - was kept for six hundred years. However, the original icon was lost, and, according to a legend, believers will find it again after the restoration of the Orthodox monasteries in Ossetia.
