Ioannovsky Convent

The Ioannovsky Convent stands by the Karpovka River and is one of the stauropegic convents — those subordinate directly to the Patriarch rather than to the local diocese. It was conceived by Archpriest Ioann Sergiev, known as John of Kronstadt, as an urban metochion of the community he had founded in his native village of Sura. The site was consecrated on 8 May 1900, and the foundation was laid two weeks later by Bishop Boris of Yamburg. The design, in the Neo-Byzantine style, was created by the architect Nikolai Nikonov. Already in 1901 the metochion became an independent convent, dedicated to John of Rila, the founder's heavenly patron.

The lower church, dedicated to this saint, was consecrated personally by John of Kronstadt on 17 January 1901, and the upper church, occupying the top two floors of the building, was consecrated by Metropolitan Antony in November of the following year. By 1908 a five-storey building for the sisters and clergy had been completed, along with an infirmary and icon-painting and needlework workshops. In the basement a crypt-church was set up, consecrated in honour of the prophet Elijah and Queen Theodora — the patron saints of Father Ioann's parents; this took place on 21 December 1908, the day after his death. The founder was buried there in a marble tomb, near which cases of healing soon began to be recorded — twelve of them in 1909 alone. By decree of Nicholas II the convent was raised to first class.

After the revolution, the convent was turned into a labour commune in 1919, and officially liquidated in 1923, though some of the sisters were able to remain there for several more years. The buildings were handed over to a land-reclamation technical college. In the mid-1920s the entrance to the crypt was bricked up, and the founder's relics were secretly hidden beneath the floor, at a depth of about a metre, and then covered with concrete — they have never been recovered, although the stone tomb has been restored to its original place. In the early 1930s almost all the nuns were arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan.

Revival began in 1989, when the buildings were returned to the diocese as a metochion of the Estonian Pühtitsa Convent. Together with the city's admirers of Father Ioann, the nuns managed to prepare the lower church for services in just a couple of weeks. A night service on 31 October and its consecration the next day — the first in 66 years — drew such a crowd that the service had to be relayed outside through loudspeakers. In the summer of 1991 the Patriarch consecrated the upper chapel dedicated to the Twelve Apostles, and by the end of the year the convent had received stauropegic status, coming out from under the authority of the local diocese. Today services are held daily, and a memorial service for the convent's founder is regularly sung at the tomb in the lower church, whose veneration continues to draw pilgrims.