Zhyrovichy Monastery, Orthodox monastery in Zhyrovichy, Belarus

Zhyrovichy Monastery is an Orthodox monastic complex in Belarus featuring multiple churches that blend Baroque and Classical architectural styles. The grounds contain residential quarters, seminary buildings, orchards, and gardens forming the largest religious center in the country.

The monastery grew from a church built where herders found a jasper icon of the Virgin, dated by tradition to 1470 or 1490 and by other accounts to around 1500. The wooden buildings burned in 1655 and were rebuilt largely in stone; the Assumption Cathedral rose between 1613 and 1650. Orthodox until 1609, the community passed to the Basilian Uniates, then returned to Orthodoxy in 1839 under Bishop Iosif Semashko.

The monastery's name comes from the village of Zhyrovichy, where herders found a jasper oval icon of the Virgin and Child in a pear tree. The icon, crowned in 1730 by Metropolitan Athanasius Sheptitsky with a Roman crown blessed by Pope Benedict XIII, is now kept in the Assumption Cathedral. Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic Belarusians celebrate its feast on May 7, Orthodox believers on May 20.

The complex has an irregular layout: the Dormition Cathedral forms the centre, linked by covered passages to the seminary building and the residential block, whose ground floor has an arched gateway. The Cross Exaltation Church stands on the highest ground in the eastern part, and the Annunciation Church lies south-east of the cathedral. The 1828 bell tower stands in front of the main cathedral, outside the main monastery territory.

The icon is a jasper oval about the size of a child's hand, carved with the Eleousa image and the Slavonic Magnificat refrain. A copy reached Rome, where it is venerated as the Madonna del Popolo in the church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus. In 1730 Metropolitan Athanasius Sheptitsky crowned it with a Roman crown blessed by Pope Benedict XIII.