Moscow museums · Architecture and estates
Architecture and estates · since 1524
Novodevichy Convent
The Novodevichy Convent
After Kolomenskoye the second building of Moscow on the World Heritage list, and for wholeness of ensemble the first: a convent of the late seventeenth century has come down almost without rebuilding — walls, towers, gate churches, refectory. The Smolensk Cathedral of 1524 keeps sixteenth-century frescoes in their places and an iconostasis of a kind of which Moscow has two or three. What is not here is a museum in the ordinary sense: this is a working convent with a museum display, and what is open changes from season to season.
Minimum route
1.5–2 hours
Founded
1524
What to see
The Smolensk Cathedral of 1524 with its sixteenth-century wall painting and iconostasis. The walls and towers of the late seventeenth century — Moscow Baroque entire. The burial ground: Denis Davydov, Sergei Solovyov, and Chekhov before he was moved.
Minimum route — 1.5–2 hours for the essentials
An hour and a half.
- 20 minuteswalk round the outside from the pond: from here the convent reads as an ensemble.
- 40 minutesthe Smolensk Cathedral, if open: frescoes and iconostasis.
- 30 minutesthe yard, the refectory, the gate churches, the bell tower.
Reference
About the museum
Founded in 1524 by Vasily III in memory of the return of Smolensk. Its present appearance took shape at the end of the seventeenth century under the Tsarevna Sofia. On the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2004. Since 2010 the ensemble has belonged to the Church; the museum work is done by a branch of the Historical Museum.
The building
A rare case of an ensemble of a single date: walls, twelve towers, the gate churches of the Transfiguration and the Intercession, the refectory and the bell tower were all built in the 1680s and have not been rebuilt since. The cathedral is a century and a half older than they are.
Good to know
The convent is a working one: services are held in the churches and entry is closed during them. The burial ground inside the walls is not the famous Novodevichy Cemetery outside them: two different places and two different entrances.
What to read
William Craft Brumfield, “Landmarks of Russian Architecture: A Photographic Survey” — the walls and towers set in the line of the fortified monastery, after which they stop looking like decoration. London: Routledge, 2013.
ISBN 9781317973249
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Sportivnaya, seven minutes on foot. The pond and the outside view are from the south-east — that is where it was painted from.
Opening times
The ensemble was handed to the Church in 2010; the museum display is run by the State Historical Museum and not in every building all year. Check before setting out.
When to go
Summer and a clear day: the Smolensk Cathedral is unheated and closed in winter, and the ensemble reads only from outside and in light. A weekday morning — it can be busy here.
Contacts
Of interest to children
An ensemble reads badly to children, and they will not follow the cathedral without the telling. From 9 and with a guide; the walk round the pond, though, is for any age.
· No. 75