Svyatogorsky Monastery at Pushkin Hills

Svyatogorsky Monastery is located at the settlement Pushkin Hills. Assumption Cathedral was built on a high hill in center of the monastery in the 18th century. The burial vault of the Gannibals-Pushkins is at the altar of the cathedral. A great Russian poet A. S. Pushkin was buried there on February 6, 1837.

A shepherd Timotheus had a vision of the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God «Odigitria» on the Tomtit Hill in 1566. Svyatogorsky monastery was established in that place by the order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible three years later. It was one of the most venerable monasteries in Russia. Ivan the Terrible gave to the monastery a 15-pood (252 kg) bell and Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich gave to it a Gospel.

When in exile at Mikhaylovskoye Pushkin often visited the monastery and met with its hegumen Jonah with whom he was on good terms. Also Pushkin spent a lot of time at the monastery library when he worked at his tragedy «Boris Godunov». The monastery is surrounded by the ancient stone fence. Entering the monastery through the Holy Gate you get on a small meadow with a house built in 1911. To the right are two stone stairs leading up to the Assumption Cathedral.

Osip Abramovich Gannibal, (in 1806), Marie Alexeyevna, (in 1818), and Nadezhda Osipovna (in 1836), grandfather, grandmother and mother of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, were buried at the burial vault of the Gannibals-Pushkins. Hardly a year after he had buried his mother Pushkin himself was brought there. The body of the poet was consigned to the grave at the chancel wall on February 6, 1837 after the dead-office served by the archimandrite Gennadius at the souther aisle of the Assumption Cathedral.