🛐 The Spaso-Andronikov Monastery is one of the oldest monastic houses in Moscow, founded in the 14th century by Metropolitan Alexius. According to tradition, during a storm on the Black Sea he vowed to build a church in honour of the icon of the Holy Mandylion (Image of the Saviour Not Made by Hands), which helped him to survive. In ancient times the monastery served as a watchtower fortress on the south‑eastern approaches to Moscow.

💪 The monastery's main jewel is the white‑stone Cathedral of the Saviour, built in the early 15th century. It is the oldest surviving Moscow church outside the Kremlin walls, and Andrei Rublev himself took part in painting its frescoes.

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🎶 Dmitri Shostakovich is one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, whose work has become an integral part of world culture. At the age of just 19 he gained international fame thanks to his First Symphony, and went on to create an enormous legacy encompassing 15 symphonies, the operas The Nose and Katerina Izmailova, ballets, chamber works and film scores.

🎼 Shostakovich's contribution to world culture is immense: he became the first Soviet composer to achieve undisputed global recognition. His music, which opened up "new dimensions of world culture", had a significant influence on the development of musical art and continues to be performed all over the world. Shostakovich enriched virtually every musical genre with innovative ideas.

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💪 Zachatyevsky Monastery (Conception Monastery) is the oldest convent in the capital. It was founded in 1360 by Metropolitan Alexius, who built a wooden church here in honour of the Conception of Saint Anne.

👧 After the monastery was closed in 1927, it was revived only in 1995, and today only the 17th-century gate church, miraculously spared from demolition, remains of the old buildings. For centuries, childless Russians have had a tradition of coming here to pray for the birth of a child — that is precisely why the monastery was named "Zachatyevsky" (Conception).

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🇷🇺 The family of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, is not merely another chapter in our history; it is a symbol of tragic beauty that has forever remained in the national memory. The emperor and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, had five children: four daughters and one son. The beauty of the grand duchesses astounded their contemporaries. Each of them was of marriageable age for the finest princes of the Old World: the kings of Romania, the Serbian heirs or the English dukes, and plans for splendid dynastic unions were already being drawn up at the courts. The Romanov family became the personification of that old Russia where honour, beauty and faith were the backbone of existence.

🇷🇺 The Romanovs lived mainly in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, which became their principal residence from 1905. However, the 1917 revolution turned this corner of paradise into a prison; they were later taken into custody and sent first to Tobolsk and then to Yekaterinburg. There they were placed in the house of the engineer Ipatiev. In the night of 16–17 July 1918, the entire imperial family, together with their attendants, was shot. That night Russia lost its tsar, but his family and his dynasty will forever remain in the memory of the Russian people.

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❤️From Russia with love