On the Steep Banks of the Moskva River

Today, we are going to visit what used to be the southeastern outskirts of Moscow where such remarkable monuments of medieval Russian architecture as the Novospassky Monastery and the Krutitsy Metochion are still preserved. You can get there by subway (stepping off at “Proletarskaya”) or by streetcar (taking No. 35 from the Paveletsky railroad station). In the latter case you have the advantage of viewing, on the left-hand side as you cross the bridge, a wonderful panorama of the Novospassky Monastery and, on the right-hand side, the Krutitsy Metochion with its golden cross rising above the high river bank.

The first thing you glimpse there is the 70-meter-high Novospassky bell tower which once contained the main entrance to the monastery. Later on this entrance was bricked up and a new one was made near it—rammed through a three-meter-thick fortress wall. Entering, you take a few steps along the passage, and the noises of the big city become shut out completely.

Originally, in the early 14th century, the Novospassky Monastery was located on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin and called “Spassky Monastery.” In 1490, when reconstruction work was started in the Kremlin, Czar Ivan III ordered the Spassky Monastery to be shifted onto the high bank of the Moskva River, and from then on it was given the name of “Novospassky Monastery.” This monastery became one of a chain of fortresses protecting Moscow on the southeast, and a century later, in 1591, it played an important part in repulsing the inroads made on Moscow by the Crimean khan Kazy-Girei. It was at the walls of the Novospassky Monastery in 1612, during the so-called “troubled times” period, that Prince Dmitri Pozharsky with his troop swore to liberate Moscow from foreign invaders, and they lived up to their oath.

In the wake of the fateful events of the early 17th century, particular attention was devoted in Russia to the construction of fortresses. Built up in the 1640s, the Novospassky Monastery received thick stone walls and five towers. The cathedral built by Ivan III in 1491-1496 was pulled down, and a new one began to be constructed in 1645. It was designed to serve also as a tomb for the new royal dynasty, the Romanovs.

As time went on, the monastery was expanded and fortified. It now had a special stavropegial status of being under the personal supervision of the Patriarch, as well as of being a place of “royal pilgrimage.” At the same time, however, it was also a place of confinement for law-breakers and heretics. In 1812, the monastery was ransacked and plundered by Napoleon’s soldiers. Looking for hidden treasures, they even broke tombstones in the burial-vault. By 1820, however, the monastery was fully restored. But the worst was yet to come about a century later: in 1918, the Soviet government closed down the monastery and turned it into a special kind of jail—a branch of the notorious Taganka Prison. After the Second World War the premises of the monastery were used by various people and organizations, including those dealing in coal and making furniture. In 1968, it was decided to turn the monastery into a museum. Thereupon, its walls, domes and bell towers began to be restored. In 1990 the long-abused place of worship was finally turned over to believers. Currently, religious services are being held at its main cathedral, and the monastery was given back its stavropegial status.

After many years of humiliating devastation the monastery is being reborn. The first evidence of that is the renovated, sparkling-white building of the Transfiguration of the Savior Cathedral (built by Yakov Bukhvostov in 1645-49), the monastery’s architectural and spiritual center. An imposing and beautifully decorated structure, the cathedral is second in size only to the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Assumption. Working on the interior of the cathedral were such noted icon painters of the Kremlin’s Armory Chamber as Fyodor Zubov and Gury Nikitin, together with a team of artists from Kostroma. Unfortunately, the state in which the paintings have been preserved is poor: repeatedly damaged by fires, they have been repainted and renovated time and again, and today they present a medley of various fragments dating from different periods, which need being restored carefully. A prominent feature of the cathedral’s southern apse is a porch done in Russian style with a mosaic icon of the Savior “Not Made with Human Hands” (created by Acad. Sergei Solovyov in 1900). The porch is the entrance to the crypt of the Boyar Romanovs’ burial-vault and an underground church named after St. Romanos the Melodist (1900).

Two churches annexed to the cathedral at different times form a single ensemble with it. Towering at its southwestern corner is a double-tiered structure, the Church of the Veil of the Most Holy Mother of God (1673-1675) with its refectory and bread-distributing chamber. Adjoining the cathedral on the northwest is the classic Church of the Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God “The Sign” (1791-1795), which is the Count Sheremetevs’ tomb. The church was designed by Yelizvoi Nazarov, a relation and assistant of Vasily Bazhenov, the great Russian architect of the 18th century. A four-column Tuscan portico adorns the building. It is considered to be one of the best monuments of austere “Moscow classicism” and is attributed to Bazhenov himself. In the northeastern corner of the monastery courtyard stands the infirmary Church of St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker (1652).

The monastery’s bell tower, designed by Ivan Zherebtsov, was built in 1759-1785. It is adorned with a multitude of heavy columns—Doric (the second tier), Ionic (the third tier) and Corinthian (the fourth tier)—which form porticos with split frontons and a lot of intricate baroque details. Installed above the fourth tier are a clock with chimes and some stone vases. The second tier of the bell tower contains the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh (1787).

Walking about the monastery grounds, you can feast your eyes on such features, typical of the medieval architecture, as fortress walls (having a combined length of about one kilometer), the towers erected by the famous architect Fyodor Kon, as well as the Father Superior’s chambers and the monks’ cells built in the 17th century. Not far from the bell tower, on its northern side near the wall, there stands a white-marble chapel erected over the grave of a nun named Dosifeya. Rumor connects her with the name of Princess Avgusta Tarakanova, a mysterious figure in 18th-century Russian history. Princess Tarakanova asserted that she was the daughter of the late empress, Elizabeth Petrovna, and laid claims to the Russian throne. The reigning empress, Catherine II, who generally was rather liberal, could be merciless in such cases. Princess Tarakanova was arrested at once. According to one version, she was incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress and died in her prison cell which was flooded at the empress’s orders. This version is featured by the artist Konstantin Flavitsky in his painting called Princess Tarakanova (1864) which is exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Another version was (and still is) widespread at the Novospassky Monastery and fervently believed in. According to it, in 1786, at the secret orders of the empress, an unknown woman of noble origin was brought to Moscow’s Ivanovsky Convent where she lived for the next 25 years as a nun named Dosifeya. She may really have been Princess Tarakanova, for upon Dosifeya’s death her ashes were moved to the Novospassky Monastery and buried there. It will be remembered that the monastery contains the Romanovs’ burial-vault. The white-marble chapel has been partially restored (it has no cupola yet). Touchingly, there are always small bouquets of fresh flowers in a niche there...

The Krutitsy Metochion is a unique complex of monuments dating from the 15th-17th centuries and a former residence of the metropolitans of the Sarai and Podon dioceses. At the initiative of Prince Alexander Nevsky himself, an Orthodox diocese was established in Great Sarai, capital of the Golden Horde whose khans were rather tolerant toward other religions. To begin with, a monastery built of wood was set up there. In the 17th century this was followed by the full-scale construction of a metropolitan’s estate. Rising on your left is the five-domed Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God (1664-1685) with a tent-roofed bell tower and a steep stairway leading up to it.

Stretching from the church to the Metochion’s main entrance is a large wall with two roofed-over passageways on top—the Uspensky Passageway, on one side of the wall, and the Voskresensky Passageway, on the other. The two are connected above the arches of the Main (Holy) Gate by a small dwelling unit called “teremok,” which is the pride of the Krutitsy Metochion. The teremok and the above-mentioned passageways were built in 1693-1694 by Osip Startsev, a most prominent architect of that period and his assistant, L. Kovalyov. Their contemporaries were amazed (as we are today) at the skillful use of brightly-colored tiles as facing material. They cover the teremok’s walls, the panels between its windows, the ledges and cornices. Even the window casings are faced with tiles depicting delicately interlaced vines. Considering the fact that the Metochion was surrounded by a spacious garden with fruit trees, various bushes, vineyards, flowerbeds, greenhouses and arbors where birds sang, it is not surprising that the contemporaries often referred to Krutitsy as a “marvellous garden” or even as a “paradise.” During the “troubled times” period of 1611-1612, when Russia’s chief holy object, the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, was in the hands of the invaders, it was precisely the Assumption Cathedral of the Krutitsy Metochion that became the main cathedral church of Russia.

Admittedly, even in the early 1960s, most of this beauty simply did not exist. The authorities (both the Soviet ones and the czarist before them) had too little respect for the diocese which was abolished back in 1788. Before the revolution of 1917 there were army barracks and a guardhouse on the premises of the Krutitsy Metochion, and during the Soviet period—a hostel of the Moscow Military District. The main monuments have been restored owing to the many years’ selfless labor of P.D. Baranovsky, a famous architect, restoration expert and scholar. Under his supervision the historical appearance of the Krutitsy Metochion was restored in the period from 1950 to 1989. A modest memorial plaque on the wall of the Uspensky Passageway says: “To P.D. Baranovsky, the great restorer and enthusiast of Russian culture.”