Male Novospassky Monastery on the bank of the Moskva River was founded in the XV century by the Grand Duke Ivan III. Since then the monastery has been considered to be the burial-vault of the Romanovs family. In 1918 the monastery was closed, and since 1935 residents have been accommodated in the churches converted for economic needs. Their eviction began only in 1960. Then there was a museum of history in the monastery. Only in 1991 the monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 1995 the ashes of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich Romanov, who had been killed by a terrorist Ivan Kaliayev in 1905, were transferred to the Novospassky Monastery. A commemorative cross reconstructed by the project of Viktor Vasnetsov was erected on the site of his reburial. Since 2014 the monastery has been ringing a 16-ton bell "Romanovsky" cast instead of the bell destroyed in the XX century. Today a six-columned Transfiguration Cathedral of the XVII century with murals by Guriy Nikitin is of a particular interest here as well as a 78-meter-high bell tower of the 18th century - one of the highest in the pre-revolutionary Moscow.