Novodevichy Convent

The red and white crenellated walls and golden domes of Novodevichy Convent make it one of Moscow's most attractive monasteries. Situated a short walk from the Luzhniki Sports Stadium, in a tranquil southern suburb of Moscow, inside a bend in the Moscow River, the Convent's leafy gardens are a pleasure to stroll in during the summer months and a welcome retreat from the bustle of the city.

Novodevichy, or "New Maidens Convent" in English, was founded by Vasily III in 1524 to commemorate the recapture of Smolensk from the Lithuanians in 1514. The convent's main cathedral was consecrated in honor of the Smolenskaya Icon of the Mother of God Hodigitria, which according to legend was painted by St.Luke himself.

The convent is rather like a miniature Kremlin and was built in 1525 in the same style as the Kremlin Cathedral of the Assumption. In the early 17th century, during the reign of Boris Godunov, the walls of the cathedral were ornamented with frescoes representing historic episodes in the struggle for the formation of a centralized Russian state. In the 1680s a team of Russian artists and craftsmen, including K. Mikhailov and O. Andreyev, created one of the finest ornamental works of the period — a multi-tiered iconostasis, carved from solid gold.

Novodevichy was Moscow's richest convent and many wives and widows of tsars and boyars and their daughters and sisters entered the convent and in doing so handed over all their jewels, pearls, gold and silver. Among the convents more notable residents were Tsarina Irina Godunova, who withdrew to Novodevichy after the death of her husband Tsar Fyodor, and was accompanied by her brother, the boyar Boris Godunov, who remained there until he was crowned in the monastery grounds in 1589.

As soon as the convent was founded, a cemetery was opened on its grounds, which subsequently became a traditional burial place for the church dignitaries, noble families and feudal lords of Moscow and later on, in the 19th century, of the intelligentsia and merchants. The cemetery is the resting place of Sofia Alexeyevna and Yevdokia Fyodorovna, the relatives of Tsar Peter the Great, the partisan Denis Davydov, poet and hero of the Napoleonic War of 1812, the historians S. Solovyov and Pagodin and the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov among others. The composers Shostokovich and Scriabin and the famous art collectors Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov are also buried there. Nikita Krushchev was given a famous memorial gravestone, crafted in black and white marble by the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny and symbolizing the ambiguity and contradictory nature of Krushchev's period in power.

Novodevichy was closed in 1922 by the Soviet Government, its nuns evicted and the convent building used to house a "Museum of Women's Emancipation". The convent was later re-opened as a museum to Novodevichy's history and in 1964 became the official residence of the Orthodox Church's Metropolitan of Kruitsky and Kolomensky. The entire complex is now open to visitors.