Localization and justification of the location of the Albazinsk Spassky Monastery 1671-1685

The localization of the Albazin Spassky Monastery is a relevant task that has sparked discussion among researchers interested in the history of the first outpost on the Amur River. Existing textual sources allow for serious discrepancies regarding both the monastery's position relative to the fortress and the distance to it. It is also worth noting that to this day, only a single image has survived, containing a rather schematic representation of the Albazin Spassky Monastery. This image is a cartographic drawing titled "Luosha," which depicts the course of the first siege of the Albazin Fortress in 1685. Nevertheless, it is well known that the Albazin Spassky Monastery, in addition to the church in the Albazin stronghold, had a fairly large estate, which included arable land, dacha plots, watermills, shops, and so forth. However, apart from the church, the exact locations of any of the other objects mentioned in archival sources have not been localized by researchers. An objective analysis of the current state of this task led to the conclusion about the necessity of applying geoinformation technologies, which allowed for a qualitatively new solution. In turn, researchers had previously proposed several of the most suitable locations, from the area of the modern border outpost to the mouth of the nearest large tributary upstream of the Amur River – the Uldugich River. This article presents the main arguments supporting the viability of the most recent hypothesis, suggesting that the monastery is located on the territory of the modern secondary school in the village of Albazino. Specifically, thanks to existing 20th-century maps and modern data, such as topographic maps and satellite images, several signs were identified, among which the proximity of the proposed site to the hypothetical channel of the Melnichnaya River and the remnants of fortifications built by the Chinese army during the second siege of the Albazin Fortress stand out. It should be noted that the approach to overlaying maps can be quite useful when researching similar lost architectural objects in Siberia and the Far East.