2
hours
Visit
The Donskoy Monastery Tour
- City : Moscow
- Season : All seasons
- Duration : 2 h
The Donskoy Monastery was founded in 1591 on the same place where the Russian army waited for an attack of the Crimean Tatars. According to the legend, the Russian army was saved from the Tatar attack by the prayers of the Czar Fyodor, son of the famous Ivan the Terrible. The Tatars would never attack Moscow again.
In the 20th century, before becoming an officially-protected historical site, the monastery was a target of the young Soviet State in its desire to crush the Church, and where the "last Patriarch" Tikhon would find refuge before dying.
The cemeteries of the Donskoy Monastery are highlights of a visit to the Monastery. Along with splendid monuments, the cemetery holds the sepulchres of the parents of Alexander Pushkin, the grave of Joseph Beauvais, the architect of the main Bolshoi Theatre, and the grave of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature as the author of the major work on the Soviet repressive labor camps known as GULAGs, “The GULAG Archipelago”.
Dubbed as an “architectural necropolis”, the monastery also houses decorative fragments of the first Christ the Savior Cathedral that was destroyed in the 1930’s, including impressive marble sculptures once installed on the facades of the original Cathedral.
Hours of operation: Open from 9 am to 8 pm during weekdays (from 11 am to 4 pm on weekends and public holidays).
