Savvino Storozhevsky Monastery, Zvenigorod, Moscow Oblast, Russia
The Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery (Саввино-Сторожевский монастырь, “the Storozhi monastery of St. Savva”) is a Russian Orthodox monastery dedicated to the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos. It is the preeminent landmark of Zvenigorod, a town 48 km west of Moscow.
In 1398, Prince Yuri of Zvenigorod asked Savva, or Sabbas, one of the first disciples of Sergius of Radonezh, to come to his capital city and set up a monastic abode on the Storozhi Holm (Watching Hill). St. Savva of Storozhi was interred in the white stone cathedral of the Virgin’s Nativity in 1407. This diminutive, roughly hewn church still stands, although its present-day exquisite look is the result of a 1970s restoration campaign. The frescoes in the altar date back to the 1420s, but the rest of the interior was painted in 1656. A magnificent iconostasis in five tiers and the Stroganov School royal doors were installed in 1652.
In 1650, the pious Tsar Alexis selected the Zvenigorod monastery as his suburban residence. An ashlar residence for the tsar and a smaller palace for his wife date from the early 1650s. Alexis had the churches encircled with stone walls and towers, patterned after those of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra. Particularly noteworthy is a large belfry, erected in four bays in 1650 and crowned with three tents and a clocktower. A new gate church was consecrated to the feast of the Holy Trinity in 1652.
After the death of Feodor III, who spent much of his reign at his Zvenigorod palaces, the monastery declined. On September 12, 1812 the Italian corps of Eugène de Beauharnais defeated Wintzingerode’s squadron of light cavalry under the monastery walls. The skirmish is described in the memoirs of Prince Sergey Volkonsky and Count Alexander von Benckendorff.
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