In May 2024, the Novodevichy Monastery will celebrate its 500th anniversary. The Novodevichy Monastery was founded in 1524 by the Grand Prince of Moscow, Vasily III, in honor of the return of the ancient Russian city of Smolensk to Russian lands. Smolensk belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for 110 years (since 1404). At the turn of the 13th-15th centuries, two powerful states emerged on the site of the ancient Rus’ principalities: Moscow Russia and Lithuanian Russia. Lithuanian Russia included ancient Russian cities – Kiev, Polotsk, Chernigov, Minsk, Orsha, Pinsk, and others, and since 1404, Smolensk. The monastery was located in the southwestern direction from Moscow, the most vulnerable to raids by Crimean Tatars and Western invasions, and served as protection for Moscow along with other monasteries surrounding the city. It was built near the Smolensk road, in a bend of the Moskva River, on its left bank, at three water crossings (in the 15th century, the village of Luzhnikovo is mentioned). This area is now called Luzhniki. Vasily III allocated 3000 rubles in silver and two palace villages – Alabuzino and Traparevo – for the creation of the monastery. The monastery was created as a royal court monastery. It housed relatives of Ivan the Terrible – Ulyana Paleckaia, the tsar’s daughter-in-law, the widow of Ivan’s younger brother Yuri; Elena Sheremeteva, also the daughter-in-law of Ivan the Terrible, the widow of Ivan’s son; Irina Godunova, the widow of Tsar Feodor Ivanovich, the sister of the boyar and future Tsar Boris Godunov; Ksenia Godunova, the daughter of Boris Godunov; the widow of the Livonian King Magnus, Maria Vladimirovna, the daughter of Prince V.A. Staritsky; the wife of Tsar Vasily Shuisky, Ekaterina Buynosova-Rostovskaia; the mother of Maria Dolgorukaia, the wife of Tsar Michael Romanov. Since 1689, the monastery housed Peter I’s elder sister, Tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna, her sisters Evdokia, Ekaterina, and Maria Miloslavskaia, and Peter I’s first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina. The monastery remained royal until the first quarter of the 18th century, after which nuns from various social classes lived there. The Novodevichy Monastery was associated with the most important political and military events in Russian history. For example, the election of Boris Godunov as tsar in 1598. These events were described by A.S. Pushkin in his tragedy “Boris Godunov”: the setting is the Kremlin and the Novodevichy Monastery. After the death of Tsar Feodor Ivanovich, the Rurik dynasty ended. Feodor’s widow, Tsarina Irina Godunova, moved from the Kremlin to the Novodevichy Monastery. The monastery’s heyday coincided with the seven-year reign of Tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna (1682-1689), when an intense period of stone construction began and continued throughout her reign. During these years, all the main buildings of the Baroque ensemble were built: the Pokrovskaya Gate Church with the Mariinsky Chambers (1683-1688), the two-tiered Uspenskaya Church with refectory chambers (1685-1687), the Preobrazhenskaya Gate Church and the Lopukhinsky Chambers (1687-1688), and the monastery bell tower (1689-1690). Gradually, the familiar architectural ensemble of the Novodevichy Monastery took shape. It is assumed that Sofia sent a letter from the monastery to the streltsy (guardsmen), urging them to rise in rebellion and ask her to return to the throne. The fact of the letter’s existence was not reliably established, as the monastery’s archive burned. The streltsy uprising of 1698 was harshly suppressed: over 1500 streltsy were executed in Moscow, and about 240 were executed on the Maiden’s Field in front of the monastery. After the second streltsy uprising, Sofia was tonsured as a nun with the name Susanna and spent the next six years in stricter conditions in the streltsy guardhouse at the Naprudnaya Tower of the monastery. Before her death, she was tonsured into the great schema with the name Sofia, and in 1704 she was buried in the Smolensk Cathedral. Next to her are the white stone tombs of her sisters Evdokia and Ekaterina Miloslavskaia, as well as Peter I’s first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina. It should be remembered that the monastery was a “watchman monastery” and a fortress monastery and, therefore, witnessed the dramatic military history of the Russian state. When Devlet-Giray’s troops approached Moscow in 1571, a fire broke out in the Novodevichy Monastery, and in 1591, during the invasion of Kazı-Giray, artillery was already installed on the monastery’s walls. Upon ascending the throne, Boris Godunov donated 1000 rubles in silver to the monastery for the construction of a strong fortress wall (870 meters long with 12 towers and 4 streltsy guardhouses). On October 26, 1612, the Kremlin and Kitai-gorod were devastated and burned, as was much of Moscow. The monastery was devastated and the arson destroyed many churches and buildings. During the first Romanov reign, the monastery underwent restoration. Exactly 200 years later, on September 8, 1812, two thousand French soldiers under the command of Marshal Davout occupied the Novodevichy Monastery. They occupied all the cells and churches except the Smolensk Cathedral. The uninvited guests were not delicate at all: they slept in altars, dined on the altars, and set up six cannons opposite the northern gate. In the Uspenskaya Church, the French housed the wounded. The nuns cared for the wounded, prepared food, and sewed linens. On September 25, Napoleon visited the monastery and ordered all the monastery’s premises to be used as food stores and ordered the church of John the Baptist, located outside the monastery walls, to be blown up. This church was the only one in Moscow destroyed by Napoleon’s order. The French stayed in the monastery for a month. Before retreating, they attempted to blow up the main cathedral – the Smolensk Cathedral, placing six barrels of gunpowder in the basement and lighting the fuses before leaving. When the nuns entered the Smolensk Cathedral, there was already a fire. They quickly extinguished the fire and saved the cathedral from explosion and the monastery from fire. After the French soldiers’ stay, all the monastery’s churches had to be reconsecrated. During the Soviet era, the Novodevichy Monastery was gradually closed. In the spring of 1918, 200 cadets from the People’s Commissariat of Education were settled in the monastery, in 1920 – 300 workers from Petrograd, and in 1925, 456 people lived in the monastery. In 1922, the monastery was closed, and on March 2, 1922, a museum was established here, which in 1934 became a branch of the State Historical Museum and remained so until 2010. On January 1, 2011, a Church Museum of the Moscow Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church was established on the monastery grounds, continuing the traditions of the State Historical Museum. In 1994, under the leadership of Abbess Seraphima (Chernaia), who came from a hereditary noble family, the Chichaevs, monastic life in the monastery began to revive.