Novodevichy Convent — monastery
Vyacheslav Bukharov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Novodevichy Convent

  • 2 min read
  • 55.726° N 37.557° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The name means New Maidens' Convent, chosen to set it apart from the older Ascension Convent for women that stood inside the Moscow Kremlin.
  • Closed in 1922, the convent first became a museum called Tsarevna Sophia and the Streltsy, later renamed the Museum of Women's Emancipation.
  • Much of the convent was converted into flats in the Soviet years, which is credited with saving it from demolition.
  • During the Time of Troubles a Polish unit under Aleksander Gosiewski seized the convent in 1610–1611, after which it was given a permanent garrison of streltsy.
  • By the end of the 17th century the convent owned 36 villages across Russia, and in 1744 more than 14,000 peasants worked its lands.
  • In 1724 the convent took in a military hospital and an orphanage for abandoned girls, eventually caring for more than 250 foundlings.
  • The meadow in front of the walls, the Maiden's Field, was Moscow's most popular skating rink in the 19th century, and Tolstoy skated there himself.
  • In 1943, as Stalin eased pressure on the Orthodox Church during the Second World War, theological courses were opened inside the convent.
  • Within the walls lies an older necropolis where the partisan poet Denis Davydov, the historian Sergey Solovyov and General Alexei Brusilov are buried.
  • According to tradition, Peter the Great had rebel streltsy hanged outside the convent walls in view of the confined Tsarevna Sophia's windows.

Why it is worth it

The Novodevichy Convent, on a bend of the Moskva River south-west of central Moscow, is the most complete monastic ensemble in the city: a walled compound of red-and-white towers, onion domes and a soaring bell tower that has survived almost unchanged since the late 17th century. Grand Prince Vasily III founded it in 1524 to celebrate the capture of Smolensk ten years earlier, dedicating it to the icon of Our Lady of Smolensk, and it doubled as a fortress on the southern approaches to the capital. UNESCO listed it in 2004 as an outstanding example of the style known as Moscow Baroque.

The oldest building is the five-domed Smolensk Cathedral at the centre, dated to 1524–25 but probably rebuilt in the mid-16th century. Its frescoes are among the finest in Moscow, and its gilded iconostasis of 1685 holds 16th-century icons given by Boris Godunov alongside work by the 17th-century painters Simon Ushakov and Fyodor Zubov. Most of the rest dates from the 1680s, when the regent Sophia Alekseyevna had the convent remodelled: the crenellated walls with twelve towers, two gate churches, the refectory and the slender six-tier bell tower, 72 metres high, which was the tallest structure in Moscow after the Kremlin's Ivan the Great bell tower.

The convent's history is bound up with the royal women confined here. Irina Godunova, widow of Tsar Feodor I, took the veil at Novodevichy, and her brother Boris Godunov stayed here with her until he became tsar. Sophia herself was imprisoned in the convent after her half-brother Peter the Great took power, and Peter's first wife Eudoxia Lopukhina later lived here too. In 1812 Napoleon's troops tried to blow the convent up, and the nuns are credited with saving it. Tolstoy used its walls as settings in War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Closed by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s, it became a museum and was spared demolition; nuns returned in 1994, and today the site is shared between the Church and the State Historical Museum. Outside the south wall lies the Novodevichy Cemetery, opened around 1900, where Chekhov, Gogol, Stanislavsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khrushchev and Yeltsin are buried.

Getting there

The convent is at Novodevichy Proyezd 1 in Moscow's Khamovniki district, about 1 km from Luzhniki; the nearest metro station is Sportivnaya, around 600 m away. Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO) is about 29 km away in a straight line.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Moscow Oblast 13The Most Beautiful Places in Russia 73The Most Beautiful Monasteries in Russia 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places in Russia 11The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia 20The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Russia 23The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Monasteries 33The Most Beautiful Monasteries 79The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places 179The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

Novodevichy Convent, also known as Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery, is probably the best-known cloister of Moscow. Its name, sometimes translated as the New Maidens' Monastery, was devised to differ from the Old Maidens' Monastery within the Moscow Kremlin. The convent was founded by Grand Duke Vasily III on May 13, 1524 in honor of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God "Hodegetria" - the main shrine of Smolensk, in gratitude for the capture of Smolensk in 1514. Unlike other Moscow cloisters, it has remained virtually intact since the 17th century. In 2004, it was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

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