Zachatyevsky Monastery (Moscow)

 nunnery, conjunto, interesting place, object of cultural heritage of federal importance (Russia)

Zachatyevsky Monastery or The Conception Convent was founded about 1360 as the Alekseyevsky Convent and named for the metropolitan whose sisters Iliana and Evpraxia lived there. Later in 1584, it was rebuilt and named the Zachatyevsky Monastery. In 1696 courtier Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, who lived not far from the monastery, paid for the red brick Over-the-Gate church in the name of the Savior. For many years, people considered this the house of Rimsky-Korsakov.

In the beginning of the 19th century, the monastery received funds to build a new church. The architects, Matvey Fyodorovich Kazakov and his son, Matvey Matveyevich, erected a huge pseudo-Gothic church in 1804. The last church to be built (1844-1850) was the hospital сhurch of the Descent of the Holy Spirit which was paid for by Colonel B. M. Golovin and built by the architect Mikhail D. Bykovsky.

Closed in the 1920s, many of the cloister's buildings were used as shelters for the homeless and other purposes. Then in 1933, the main church was destroyed and in its place was built a school. Some structures remain, however. To the right of the entrance are the abbot's apartments, to the left, the nuns' cells, to the west, the altered refectory and former hospital and surrounding them all is the convent wall. The monastery was returned to the Moscow patriarchy in 1993, and services are held now in the Gate Church.