peal by nuns & me - Ivanovsky convent - Ивановский монастырь

Опубликовано: 09 Июль 2008
на канале: Victor Kotelnikov

6,942

Ivanovsky-Precursor Convent is located in Zabelin Street (former Ivanovsky or Iconny lane). http://www.ioann.org.ru/

There are convincing facts that originally a men`s monastery was situated there. It was founded by Vasil III in 1533 in honour of his new-born son v future Ivan the Terrible. The church of Ioann the Precursor and the Nikolay the Wonderer`s church inn, erected in 1657, were the first stone buildings of the convent.
The erection has been completed by 1870 after numerous demolitions and restorations of the XVIII vXIX centuries. M. D. Bykovsky worked out a project of the convent.

According to it the complex turned out a complete ensemble, surrounded by high walls with a new imposing cathedral of Ioann the Precursor in the centre and an entrance between two bell-towers. This is the only Moscow conventual building erected in the gothic style. Widows and daughters of famous noble`s families` took the veil in the Ivanovsky Convent.

Violent confinements also took place there. For example, Princess Tarakanova, who was considered to be the daughter of Empress Yelizaveta Petrovna, languished as a prisoner within the convent for many years and died under the name Dosifeya.

The convent was also the place of confinement for Darya Saltykova - 'torturer and murderer' of her serfs. In the XIX century the convent kept schools for girls-orphans and hospitals for Moscow nuns. During the Russian-Turkish war (1877-1878) a hospital for wounded soldiers was situated within the convent. At present Bykovsky-s distorted creation is being reconstructed. The bell-towers at the main entrance, walls, ceilings of the cathedral of Ioann the Precursor and the colonnade by the church-porch are well preserved.

District: Downtown
Address: 2, Mal. Ivanоvskiy Lane, Moscow
Underground: Kitay-gorod (Kaluzhsko-Rizhskoy linii)

http://russia.rin.ru/guides_e/11233.html

Situated in the Ukranian quarter of the city, visitors will find the dauntingly high walls, crenellated bell towers and brick cupolas of the Ivanovsky Convent, founded in the 16th century as a depository for unwanted wives and daughters and a prison for Moscow's noblewomen. Amongst those detained within the convent's walls during its long history were the notorious Countess Dariya Saltykova, incarcerated for torturing and murdering 139 of her own serfs, and the tragic Princess Tarakanova. The Princess, who became known as Sister Inokeniya Dosieeya, was the illegitimate child of Empress Elizabeth and Count Razumovsky. On being sent abroad to be educated, a Polish adventuress emerged and tried to claim her identity and her right to inherit the throne. The impostor was revealed and imprisoned, but Empress Catherine the Great thought it best to lure Tarakanova back to the country and confine her to a nunnery for the good of Russia and her own line of inheritance. To this task she entrusted her favorite lover, Count Orlov, who seduced the young heiress aboard a ship before locking her in her cabin and ensuring her return to Russia. Although one version of the story insists that the unlucky princess was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress and drowned during a flood, she was in fact brought to the Ivanovsky Convent and confined there for 25 years until Catherine's death, whereupon she had come to accept her fate and chose to stay.

During Soviet times the convent was abandoned and the complex turned into a police training school. Today it has been returned to the Orthodox Church and is slowly being restored with the aim of turning it back eventually into a working convent.

http://www.moscow-taxi.com/churches/i...