The vil­lage was once the largest vil­lage on the Kola Penin­su­la. And although now only a lit­tle more than 300 peo­ple live in the vil­lage, the grandeur of the wood­en archi­tec­ture mon­u­ments of Varzu­ga reminds of the impor­tance of the vil­lage in the old days.

Varzu­ga was first men­tioned in a char­ter of 1466: a res­i­dent of the vil­lage, Tim­o­fey Ermolinich, trans­ferred his lands on the Varzu­ga Riv­er to the Solovet­sky Monastery. The court­yard of the Solovet­sky Monastery was built here, as well as the Church of St. Nicholas the Won­der­work­er — pos­si­bly the first Ortho­dox church on the Kola Penin­su­la (the tem­ple was closed dur­ing Sovi­et times and is still used as a store).

And in 1674, a Pomeran­ian mas­ter named Clement built the 34-meter Assump­tion Church. Many researchers of Russ­ian church archi­tec­ture con­sid­er this tent­ed tem­ple to be one of the most remark­able mon­u­ments of wood­en archi­tec­ture in the Russ­ian North.