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Novodevichy Convent

The Novodevichy Convent was founded in 1524 by Grand Prince Vasily III in commemoration of the conquest of Smolensk in 1514. It was built as a fortress at a curve of the Moskva River and became an important part of the southern defensive belt of the capital, which had already included a number of other monasteries. The Novodevichy Convent was known to have sheltered many ladies from the Russian royal families and boyar clans, who had been forced to take the veil, such as Feodor I's wife Irina Godunova (she was there with her brother Boris Godunov until he became a ruler himself), Sophia Alekseyevna (Peter the Great's sister), Eudoxia Lopukhina (Peter the Great's first wife), and others. In 1610–1611, the Novodevichy Convent was captured by a Polish unit under the command of Aleksander Gosiewski. In the mid-XVII'th century, they transferred the nuns from other Ukrainian and Belarusian monasteries to the Novodevichy Convent.

In 1812, Napoleon's army made an attempt to blow up the convent, but the nuns managed to save the cloister from destruction. In Tolstoy's War and Peace, Pierre was to be executed under the convent walls. In another novel of his, Anna Karenina, Konstantin Lyovin (the main character) meets his future wife Kitty ice-skating near monastery walls. Indeed, the Maiden's Field (as a meadow in front of the convent came to be known) was the most popular skating-rink in XIX'th-century Moscow. Tolstoy himself enjoyed skating here, when he lived nearby, in the district of Khamovniki.

In 1922, the Bolsheviks closed down the Novodevichy Convent (the cathedral was the last to be closed, in 1929) and turned it into the Museum of Women's Emancipation. By 1926, the monastery had been transformed into a history and art museum. In 1934, it became affiliated with the State Historical Museum. Most of its facilities were turned into apartments, which spared the convent from destruction. In 1943, when Stalin started to make advances to the Russian Orthodox church, he sanctioned opening the Moscow Theological Courses at the convent. Next year the program was transformed and became the Moscow Theological Institute. In 1945, the Soviet authorities returned Assumption Cathedral to the believers. In 1994, nuns returned to the convent, which is currently under the authority of the Metropolitan of Krutitsy and Kolomna. Some of the churches and other monastic buildings are still affiliated with the State Historical Museum. In 1995, they resumed service in the convent on patron saint's days.

Gate Church of the Transfiguration of Our Saviour

Церковь Спаса Преображения; Преображенская надвратная церковь

Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin with Refectory

Церковь Успения Пресвятой Богородицы с трапезной

Bell-tower

Колокольня; Церкови Варлаама и Иоасафа (в нижнем ярусе) и Иоанна Богослова (в среднем ярусе)

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Russian Baroque

Specifically, the Naryshkin-Stroganov Baroque.