Novodevichy Convent

Novodevichy Convent is a convent of the Russian Orthodox Church located in Devichye Pole (Maidens' Field) on a bend of the Moskva River. It was founded by Grand Prince Vasily III on 13 May 1524 in fulfillment of a vow made during the siege of Smolensk in 1514, in honor of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, "Hodegetria," which became the convent's principal holy relic. The site was chosen at the spot where, in 1456, the people of Moscow had bidden farewell to the miracle-working icon as it was sent to Smolensk. For its first two centuries the convent frequently served as a place of confinement for women of the tsar's family.

Under Boris Godunov the convent was turned into a fortified outpost: stone walls with battlements and towers, about 900 meters long, were built, capable of housing a garrison of up to 350 streltsy. In 1689, on the orders of Peter I, his half-sister, Tsarevna Sophia, was forcibly tonsured as a nun here after the suppression of the Streltsy uprising, and in 1698 the disgraced tsaritsa Eudoxia Lopukhina, Peter I's first wife, met the same fate. During the regency of Tsarevna Sophia, at the end of the 17th century, a unified architectural ensemble in the Moscow (Naryshkin) Baroque style took shape around the Smolensk Cathedral, most of whose buildings are attributed to the architect Pyotr Potapov. It was also then, in 1690, that the six-tiered bell tower, 72 meters high, was built — the tallest in Moscow after the bell tower of Ivan the Great; according to some estimates, it was originally conceived as seven-tiered but remained unfinished after Sophia's overthrow in 1689.

In 1724 the convent opened an orphanage for two hundred and fifty abandoned baby girls, where, on Peter I's orders, they were taught lace-making by craftswomen brought from Brabant. The convent's architectural ensemble has changed little since the 17th century and, as an exceptionally well-preserved example of Moscow Baroque, is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The convent was closed in 1922 and turned into a museum devoted to the history of Tsarevna Sophia and the Streltsy uprisings; monastic life resumed only in 1994. Adjacent to the convent, since 1898, has been the Novodevichy Cemetery, to which the graves of many outstanding figures of Russian culture and science were transferred from other necropolises during the Soviet era — today it remains one of the most prestigious burial sites after the Kremlin Wall. The convent is now under the joint administration of the Russian Orthodox Church and the State Historical Museum, and since 2010 a church museum of the Moscow Diocese has operated on its grounds.