Rozhdestvensky convent (Moscow)

Rozhdestvensky Convent, or the Convent of Nativity of Theotokos (), is a female cloister in Moscow, Russia, located on the left bank of the Neglinnaya River.
Rozhdestvensky Convent was founded in 1386, probably by Maria Konstantinovna, mother of Prince Vladimir Andreyevich the Bold of Serpukhov. According to some accounts, the convent used to be located in the Moscow Kremlin until 1484. Rozhdestvensky Convent was severely damaged by fire in 1500 and 1547. In 1525, Solomonia Saburova, the first wife of Grand Prince Vasili III, was forced to take the veil under the name of Sophia. 
In the 1900s, Rozhdestvensky Convent owned 30 desyatinas of land and housed a female orphanage. It was run by a mother superior, 23 nuns and more than 200 lay sisters. The convent was abolished in 1922, but some of the nuns and lay sisters would continue living in their cells (two of them - Varvara and Viktorina - lived there until the late 1970s). Upon the closing of the convent, the most revered icons were relocated to the Church of St. Nicholas in Zvonari. When the latter was itself shut down, the icons were transferred to the church of Saint Sergius in Pushkari and later to the Epiphany church in Pereyaslavskaya Sloboda (both eventually destroyed). The divine service in Rozhdestvensky Convent was resumed in 1992.
Rozhdestvensky Boulevard and Rozhdestvenka Street in Moscow owe their names to the convent.
Category:Monasteries in Moscow
Category:Russian Orthodox monasteries
Category:1386 establishments
ru:Богородице-Рождественский монастырь (Москва)