Rozhdestvensky monastery (Moscow)

Rozhdestvensky monastery, or Nativity Monastery ( _ru. Рождественский монастырь), is a female monastery in Moscow, Russia, located on the left bank of the Neglinnaya River.

Rozhdestvensky monastery was founded in 1386, probably by Maria Konstantinovna, mother of Prince Vladimir Andreyevich the Bold of Serpukhov. According to some accounts, the monastery used to be located in the Moscow Kremlin until 1484. Rozhdestvensky monastery was severely damaged by fire in 1500 and 1547. In 1525, Solomonia Saburova, the first wife of Grand Prince Vasili III, was forced to take the veil under the name of Sophia in this monastery.

In the 1900s, Rozhdestvensky monastery owned 30 desyatinas of land and housed a female orphanage. It was run by a mother superior, 23 nuns and more than 200 lay sisters. The monastery was abolished in 1922, but some of the nuns and lay sisters would continue living in their cells (two of them - Varvara and Viktorina - lived in the monastery until the late 1970s). Upon the closing of Rozhdestvensky monastery, the most revered icons were relocated to the Church of St. Nicholas in Zvonari. When the latter was itself shut down, the icons were transferred to the Sergiyevskaya Church in Pushkari and later to the Znameniye Church in Pereyaslavskaya Sloboda. The divine service in Rozhdestvensky monastery was resumed in 1992.

Rozhdestvensky Boulevard and Rozhdestvenka Street in Moscow owe their names to Rozhdestvensky monastery.