Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery
cemetery in Moscow opened in 1777
Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery (Russian: Преображенское кладбище, lit. Transfiguration Cemetery) is a cemetery in the eastern part of Moscow long associated with Old Believers. It was inaugurated by a Fedoseevtsy merchant in 1777 as a plague quarantine disguising the Bespopovtsy monastery. At that time the territory of the cemetery was located outside Moscow, but near its border. The cemetery soon became the spiritual and administrative center of all the Fedoseevtsy in Russia (just like the Rogozhskoe cemetery became an administrative and cultural centre for most Popovtsy Old Believers).
The cloister consisted of two equal square areas, a monastery for men and a nunnery for women, separated by a road to the cemetery. Construction work was in progress throughout the 1790s and the first decade of the 19th century. At that time, the monastery asylum was home to 1,500 people, while the chapels were attended by as many as 10,000 Old Believers. Every church within the monastery was styled a chapel; like other Bespopovtsy, the Fedoseevtsy reject priesthood, and so even their largest temples are called chapels rather than churches, since they have no altar. The area was surrounded by brick walls with decorative pseudo-gothic towers.
The public source identifies “Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery” as cemetery in Moscow opened in 1777. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Preobrazhenskoye, Cemetery and cemetery.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2108769. Authority coordinates are 55.792, 37.720. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1777.
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This entry incorporates text from “Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.