Novodevichy Convent
Walled convent of 1524 with a Moscow Baroque ensemble, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The convent was founded in 1524 by Grand Prince Vasili III to mark the return of Smolensk to Muscovy, and its Smolensk Cathedral was begun on 13 May of that year. Modelled on the Kremlin's Dormition Cathedral, it keeps a sixteenth-century fresco cycle and a large carved iconostasis of the 1680s. The convent served royal and noble women: Irina Godunova withdrew here in 1598, and Peter the Great's half-sister Sophia Alekseyevna was confined in it after 1689.
Almost all the rest of the ensemble dates from the 1680s, when Sophia rebuilt the house in the Moscow Baroque manner: crenellated brick walls with twelve towers, the Transfiguration and Intercession gate churches, the refectory with the Church of the Dormition, and a bell tower of six diminishing tiers rising about 72 metres. A branch of the State Historical Museum occupied the site from 1934; in 2010 the buildings passed to the Moscow diocese, which runs the present church museum. UNESCO inscribed the ensemble in 2004.
Highlights
- Smolensk Cathedral of 1524-25 with 16th-century frescoes
- Six-tier bell tower of 1689-90, about 72 metres high
- Moscow Baroque gate churches, refectory and crenellated walls
- UNESCO World Heritage site inscribed in 2004
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