"Novodevichy Convent" Moscow Off The Beaten Path Tip by tiganeasca

I spent an entire morning at Novodevichy (no-vo-DYEH-vee-chee) Convent in the far southern part of the city. It dates from the early sixteenth century and soon became quite wealthy. At its zenith, it had over 15,000 serfs and, over the centuries, accumulated all kinds of riches, including land, books, gold and silver, and paintings. The Convent is a combination of baroque and Russian architecture, entirely surrounded by 35-foot high red brick walls (the color scheme is red and white.) Although it sports a large parking lot in front for the tourist buses, you can get a wonderful view simply by walking to the pond across the street. The little park there has many trees and the view of the fortress-style walls and towers, as well as of the church and bell towers inside, is quite attractive. In fact, there are more domes than buildings here! Dominating the grounds is the huge five-domed Cathedral of the Smolensk Icon of Our Lady (1524-1525). In addition to the Cathedral, the convent is home to an additional three churches, a refectory, living chambers and nuns' cells. Almost all of these building date from the 1680s. The grounds themselves are park-like with many footpaths through a courtyard dense with trees. As soon as the convent was founded, a cemetery was opened next to it which is probably one of the most prestigious in the city. With a map, you can find the graves of Gogol, Bulgakov, and Chekhov, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Mayakovsky, Stanislavsky, Eisenstein, and even Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife.