Pangea Guides

Ugresha Monastery (??????-????????? ?????????), - Dzerzhinsky suburb, Svyatitelya Nikolaya ploshchad(??. ???. ???????), 1 (M: Krasnogvardeyskaya 6.1km W, Bratislavskaya 7.0km NW; from M: Kuzminki take bus 470; or M: Lublin take bus. 305; or from Kazan train station to Ploshchad Lyubertsy and bus 20, 21; ALL to the stop Svyatitelya Nikolaya ploshchad). A walled stauropegic Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Nicholas the Miracle-Worker located in a suburb of Moscow formerly known as Ugreshi and now called Dzerzhinsky. - Existed as early as 1521, when the Tatar horde of Mehmed I Giray reduced Ugreshi to ashes. The old katholikon of St. Nicholas (later destroyed by the Soviets) was built in the 16th century, rebuilt in 2003 . The Ugreshi Monastery was one of the walled abbeys defending approaches to the Russian capital from the south. - A late legend attributes its foundation to Dmitry Donskoy who, on his way to the Kulikovo Field, is supposed to have made a stay there and determined to give a decisive battle to the Tatars after seeing an image of St. Nicholas in a pious dream for this reason founded here the monastery. - Tsar Alexis habited here several times a year. - The great katholikon (main church) of the monastery was built to a Russian-Byzantine design by Alexander Kaminsky between 1880 and 1894. It is one of the largest churches in the Moscow region and has a set of new frescoes dating from 2009. - After the Russian Revolution, the monastery were given over to a children labour colony in 1920. The monastery fully restored and operates several museums, including one dedicated to Nicholas II of Russia. There is a new seminary on the grounds.