THE ALEXANDER NEVSKY MONASTERY
 St.Petersburg’s bustling
central Nevsky Prospect outflows into a large square overlooked by the
imposing bulk of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The monastery dates back
from the year 1710, the times of the city’s founder Emperor Peter the Great.
Legend has it that once, as he was inspecting the city’s environs, the
Emperor caught sight of the place where the Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky
routed the invading Swedes back in 1240. Czar Peter called the place
Victoria in commemoration of that momentous event in Russian history and
ordered the construction there of a monastery dedicated to the Holy Trinity
and Saint Alexander Nevsky.
The idea of building a monastery in that memorable place was to give the
new city a heavenly patron who the Emperor hoped would help him vanquish
the enemies of his deep-cutting reforms. On August 13, 1724 the relics
of St.Alexander Nevsky were brought in in a solemn procession from Vladimir
in Central Russia and placed inside St.Petersburg’s newly built the Holy
Trinity Cathedral. In 1920, at the height of the Bolsheviks’ campaign
to confiscate church treasures, the silver shrine containing Alexander
Nevsky’s relics was handed over to a museum.
Inside the Monastery walls there is the old Annunciation Church, which
has served as a sepulcher for members of the Russian royal family, outstanding
military commanders and statesmen. Including the great military strategist
Alexander Suvorov who became famous during the Alpine crossing of 1799
and who never lost a single battle in his life.
They say that when the hearse with Suvorov’s casket reached the arc of
gates of the Monastery, some feared the canopy was too high to get in.
They say that then the grenadiers who once served under Suvorov’s command
picked up the coffin, put it on their heads and roaring - “There’s no place
Suvorov won’t pass through!” moved it inside…
The Alexander Nevsky Monastery also comprises the old Lazarevskoye Cemetery
or the City of the Dead as the high-nosed Petersburgers preferred to call
it back in the 18th century. Many of its gravestones are excellently crafted
monuments of the imperial capital’s memorial sculpture.
Standing out from all these granite and marble tributes is a statue of
a young man resplendent in the uniform of the elite Semyonovsky Regiment,
lying on the sarcophagus lid. The legend of the sudden death of Karl Johann
Christian Reisig was well known to members of the city’s high society.
They said that once as he was standing on guard in the palace, Reisig fell
asleep. Emperor Nicholas I who happened to be passing by, stopped and leaned
over him. Opening his eyes and seeing the Emperor’s face, the hapless
officer died right on the spot. That’s the way he was later captured by
the sculptor…
The Monastery’s necropolis is the final resting place of one of the city’s
finest early 19th century sculptors, Vasily Demut-Malinovsky, the author
of the two mammoth bronze bulls he built in 1827 and erected in front of
the city’s stockyard. The statues of the bronze animals, as if running
scared out of the slaughterhouse doors, looked so life-like and intimidating...
They say that the sculptor once had a dream where these two bulls stomped
right into his studio. He spent a long time trying to explain that unusual
dream and died never finding that out…
In 1936 when they built a modern meatpacking factory just outside Leningrad,
now St.Petersburg, the bonze statues were brought in and set up right in
front of the factory. During World War Two, when the German troops reached
the distant outskirts of the city, the statues were moved to the Alexander
Nevsky Monastery where they stood the whole war in front of the Necropolis,
apparently unaware they had finally come to see their maker whose body
lay just a few meters away. His old dream had finally come true…
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