Novospassky Monastery

Novospassky Monastery is a 15th-century fort-monastery, which is located about 1km south of Taganskaya pl. The centrepiece of the monastery, the Transfiguration Cathedral, was built by the imperial Romanov family in the 1640s in imitation of the Kremlin’s Assumption Cathedral. Frescoes depict the history of Christianity in Russia, while the Romanov family tree, which goes as far back as the Viking Prince Rurik, climbs one wall. The other church is the 1675 Intercession Church. Under the river bank, beneath one of the towers of the monastery, is the site of a mass grave for thousands of Stalin’s victims. At the northern end of the monastery’s grounds are the brick Assumption Cathedral and an extraordinary Moscow-baroque gate tower. Across the road that runs south of Novospassky Monastery is the sumptuous Ecclesiastic Residence. It was the home of the Moscow metropolitans after the founding of the Russian patriarchate in the 16th century, when they lost their place in the Kremlin.