Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery (Peter and Paul, Petrovsky Vysokiy, from the beginning of the 18th century – Vysoko-Petrovsky) is a male stauropegial monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow; located on Petrovka Street.
Presumably founded in 1315 by St. Peter, Metropolitan of Kyiv, Vladimir and All Rus’. Known from written sources since 1317. The main part of the modern architectural complex of the monastery was built in the XVII-XVIII centuries. In 1929 the Bolsheviks closed it. The activity of the monastery has been resumed since 2009. In 2015, the 700th anniversary of the monastery’s founding was celebrated.
The Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery is a complex of monuments built mainly at the expense of the Naryshkin boyars in the late 17th – early 18th centuries and located on the corner of Petrovka Street and Petrovsky Boulevard.
Initially, the monastery was wooden. In 1514 the Italian architect Aleviz Novy built the first stone church of Peter the Metropolitan and a wooden church in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, which was later dismantled. At the beginning of the 17th century, the monastery’s territory was surrounded by a stone wall.
In 1671, the area of the monastery was doubled at the expense of the Naryshkins’ estate, and from 1690 to 1694, the Bogolyubsky church was built on the site of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos; Sergius Church with a refectory (built as a small copy of the same church in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra) and the Fraternal Corps with the Naryshkin Chambers connected to it by a gallery-porch; the gate of the Intercession Church with a two-tiered bell tower and the rector’s chambers attached to it by a passage; as well as a service building.
The temple’s territory also included two wooden almshouses at the corner of Petrovka and Petrovsky Boulevard.
The planning of the monastery in the 1680s-1690s included the northern (front) courtyard and the southern (economic) courtyard. In the center of the northern courtyard was the Cathedral of St. Peter. On the north side of it, the Bogolyubsky Church is symmetrically located, and from the south – the Sergius Church.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Vysoko-Petrovsky monastery had the richest sacristy. Three Gospels of the 17th century, silver crosses with particles of the Cross of the Lord, stones from the Holy Sepulcher, the relics of the great Martyrs Theodore Stratilates, Panteleimon, John the Warrior, St. Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow, St. icons of the Mother of God, a copy of 1701 from the Blachernae icon, the image of St. Peter with a particle of relics, a copy from the Kazan icon of the Mother of God.
After the revolution, everything was looted. With the beginning of the return of buildings to the monastery, new shrines gradually began to appear.
The main shrine of the monastery is a part of the relics of St. Peter, Metropolitan of Kyiv, Moscow and All Rus’, the miracle worker. On February 20, 2010, His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, handed the monastery a reliquary containing part of the relics of St. Peter. This ark stays in the altar of the St. Sergius Church, and on Saturdays during the Polyeleos, at the Vespers, they are taken out for worship of the faithful.
Working hours: daily, 07:00-19:00
Nearest metro: Tverskaya, Chekhovskaya, Pushkinskaya, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Trubnaya.
See also architecture of Moscow, churches and cathedrals of Moscow
