Novospassky Monastery

Novospassky Monastery (New Monastery of the Savior) is one of the fortified monasteries surrounding Moscow from the southeast.

It was founded in the 14th century as the Savior Church of Moscow's Kremlin. Upon its removal to the left bank of the Moskva River in 1491, the abbey was renamed "the New Savior" to distinguish it from the original cloister in the Kremlin.

The monastery was patronized by the Sheremetyev and Romanov boyars as a family sepulcher. In 1571 and 1591, the wooden citadel withstood repeated attacks of Crimean Tatars. Upon the Romanovs' ascension to the Russian throne, they completely rebuilt their family abbey in the 1640s.

Apart from the 18th-century bell-tower and the Sheremetev sepulcher in the Church of the Sign, all other buildings date from that period. They include the large Savior Cathedral (1645-49) with frescoes by the best 17th-century painters, the Intercession church at the refectory, the House of Loaf-Giving, a hospital, private rooms for the monks, and the house of Patriarch Filaret.

In uglier, modern history, a site just outside the monastery's walls was one of the mass graves for those executed during Stalin's purges. During the Soviet years, the monastery was converted into a prison, then into a police drunk tank. In the 1970s it was assigned to an art restoration institute, and finally returned to the Russian Orthodox church in the 1990s.