page_title: Sochi
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Sochi / Demographics / Religion
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Присутствие В. В. Путина на праздничном рождественском богослужении в храме Нерукотворного Образа Христа Спасителя, построенном рядом с Олимпийским парком в Имеретинской низменности в Сочи.
context_page_description: Sochi is the largest resort city in Russia. The city is situated along the Black Sea in Southern Russia, with a population of 443,562 residents, up to 600,000 residents in the urban area. The city proper covers an area of 176.77 square kilometers, while the Greater Sochi Area covers over 3,502 square kilometers. Sochi stretches across 145 kilometers, and is the longest city in Europe, the fifth-largest city in the Southern Federal District, the second-largest city in Krasnodar Krai, and the sixth-largest city on the Black Sea. Being a part of the Caucasian Riviera, it is one of the very few places in Russia with a subtropical climate, with warm to hot summers and mild winters.
  With the alpine and Nordic events held at the nearby ski resort of Rosa Khutor in Krasnaya Polyana, Sochi hosted the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games in 2014, as well as the Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix from 2014 until at least 2020. It was also one of the host cities for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
context_section_description: The Byzantine Empire brought Christianity to the Sochi region in the Middle Ages. The region was relatively isolated before 1829. In the North, a few hundred Sunni Muslim Shapsugs, a part of the Circassian nation, lived around Tkhagapsh, near Lazarevskoye. The Circassians (also known as Adyghe) converted to Islam from Christianity in the 17th century. In the nineteenth century, Islam spread to the region.
  Currently, Sochi is a large predominantly Christian city, though there are thought to be around 20,000 Muslims (5% of inhabitants) living there now (the majority are Adyghe) plus other Eastern Caucasians, Turks, Tatars, and other smaller Muslim groups.
  A mosque was built in 2008 by United Arab Emirates in the central area of Bytkha, in addition to the old mosque being around 40 km (25 miles) north of the city center in the Adyghe aul of Tkhagapsh.
  There are around thirty Russian Orthodox churches, the largest being St. Michael's, and two monasteries, plus two Catholic churches, one in the center of Sochi and the other in Lazarevskoye. The Armenian community, which is important in Sochi, gathers in about ten churches.
caption: In the Church of the Holy Mandylion
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