Moscow Guide
Zamoskvareche and the south
The Donskoy Monastery
Address: A few blocks from the Shabolovskaya station
Opening time: daily 7.30am–7pm; although open daily, parts are off limits on weekdays so it's best to come at the weekend
The massive red-brick walls of the Donskoy Monastery (Donskoy monastyr) call to mind the Red Fort at Agra or a Crusader castle in Palestine. Their height and thickness reflect a historic fear of Mongols shooting catapults and fire-arrows rather than of European armies fielding massed cannons – as do the dozen towers spaced at regular intervals. The monastic enclosure covers 42,000 square metres, with plenty of room for an old graveyard that shouldn't be confused with a newer cemetery down the road.
At the centre of the complex rises the Great Cathedral of the Don Mother of God (Bolshoy sobor Donskoy Bogomateri), also known as the "New Cathedral" (Noviy sobor). Composed of four rotund tower bays grouped around a central drum beneath five bronze domes, this was one of the largest structures of its time, begun in 1684 under Golitsyn and finally finished in 1698.
Founded in tandem with the monastery, the small Old Cathedral (Stariy sobor) resembles a simple Moscow Baroque church, painted a soft russet, with tiers of green-and-white kokoshniki and a blue onion dome. Both cathedrals are at their busiest on the feast-days of the Annunciation (April 7), the Don Virgin (Sept 1) and St Fyodor Stratilites (Feb 21).
The surrounding cemetery (Sat & Sun 10am–4pm) is crammed with headstones and funerary monuments. If you can read Cyrillic, each plot is identified by a map-board naming famous Russians buried there – though the only ones likely to register with foreigners all have disappointingly plain graves.
The dark red Church of St Nicholas was built in 1806–09 as the private chapel of the Golitsyns. Nearby stands the tent-roofed neo-Russian Chapel of the Tereshchenkos, decorated with Orthodox crosses and raised in 1899. Best of all is the neo-Byzantine Church of St John Chrysostom (tserkov Ioanna Zlatousta), built by the Pervushins in 1891. Beyond rises the Gate-Church of the Tikhvin Virgin, an imposing structure that is one of the last examples of Moscow Baroque.