The Holy Bogolyubsky Women's Convent stands on the site of the Bogolyubov city-castle of the Vladimir-Suzdal Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky. According to the legend, the horses of the prince stood at this place, where the prince saw the apparition of the Virgin. In memory of this event, Bogolyubsky ordered to draw the Bogolyubskaya Icon of the Mother of God. From that moment the prince had his second name and the name of his fortress. But neither the high stone walls with ramparts, nor the deep moats saved the prince from killing by conspirators in Bogolyubovo in 1174. A two-story ladder tower – the place of the murder – has been preserved up to our days.
The Holy Bogolyubsky Convent was founded on the site of the former prince's castle, possibly in the atonement of the atrocity (murder) after the death of Bogolyubov. Many Russian tsars, starting from Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II visited this place. Tsar Peter I gave the Swedish chimes to the monastery bell. The monastery complex is dominated by the five-domed Cathedral of the Bogolyubskaya Icon of the Mother of God, built in the 1850s-1860s by the project of the author of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, Konstantin Thon. The carved gilded iconostasis of the cathedral dates from the beginning of the 20th century. After the closure in 1923 the Holy Bogolyubsky Convent was revived in 1991, and in 1997 it became a female monastery.