page_title: Novodevichy Convent
section_title: Muscovite period
hierarchical_section_title: Novodevichy Convent / History of the convent / Muscovite period
caption_attribution_description: English: Moscow, Russia. Novodevichy Convent. Smolensk Cathedral. This is a photo of a cultural heritage object in Russia, number: 7710525000 This template and pages using it are maintained by the Russian WLM team. Please read the guidelines before making any changes that can affect the monuments database! Русский: Москва, Россия. Новодевичий монастырь. Смоленский собор.
context_page_description: Novodevichy Convent, also known as Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery, is probably the best-known cloister of Moscow. Its name, sometimes translated as the New Maidens' Monastery, was devised to differ from the Old Maidens' Monastery within the Moscow Kremlin. Unlike other Moscow cloisters, it has remained virtually intact since the 17th century. In 2004, it was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
context_section_description: Vasili III, the Grand Prince of Moscow, founded the Novodevichy Convent in 1524 in commemoration of his conquest of Smolensk in 1514. The structure began as a fortress at a curve of the Moskva River three versts to the south-west of the Moscow Kremlin. It became an important part of the southern defensive belt of Moscow, which had already included a number of other monasteries. Upon its founding, the Novodevichy Convent was granted 3,000 rubles and the villages of Akhabinevo and Troparevo. Vasili's son, tsar Ivan the Terrible (reigned 1533–1584), would later grant a number of other villages to the convent.
  The Novodevichy Convent housed many ladies from the Russian royal families and boyar clans who had been forced to take the veil, such as Ivan the Terrible's daughter-in-law Yelena Sheremeteva (in residence 1581–1587), Feodor I's wife Irina Godunova (in residence 1598–1603; she was there with her brother Boris Godunov until he became a ruler himself), Sofia Alekseyevna (Peter the Great's half-sister; in residence 1689–1704), Eudoxia Lopukhina (Peter the Great's first wife, in residence 1727–1731), and others. In 1610–1611 a Polish unit under the command of Aleksander Gosiewski captured the Novodevichy Convent. Once Russian forces had retaken the convent, tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich supplied it with permanent guards (100 Streltsy in 1616, 350 soldiers in 1618). By the end of the 17th century, the Novodevichy Convent possessed 36 villages (164,215 desyatinas of land) in 27 uyezds of Russia. In 1744, it owned 14,489 peasants.
caption: Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk at the Novodevichy Convent (16th century).
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