The famous Makaryev Fair took place every summer for more than two centuries outside of the walls of the monastery. This was one of the most famous and important merchant fairs in Eastern Europe. Many merchants from Europe and Asia arrived in July to exchange goods. From the 1620s the fair was an important event in the Russian economy. By 1800, there were over three thousand government and private buildings to house the millions of rubles worth of trade goods. In 1816, a huge fire burned most of the buildings and millions of rubles were lost. The fair was then (in 1817) moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where it became even more famous.