When Peter the Great built his new capital on the Neva, he founded a monastery at the far end of what would become Nevsky Prospekt and dedicated it to Alexander Nevsky, the medieval prince credited with defending north-western Russia against invasion. The relics of the saint were brought here in 1724, an act that gave the young city a spiritual foundation to match its political one. Raised later to the rank of lavra, the highest status in Russian Orthodox monasticism, the complex grew into an ensemble of courtyards, churches and monastic buildings dominated by the neoclassical Trinity Cathedral, designed by Ivan Starov. Its cemeteries are equally celebrated: the Tikhvin necropolis holds the graves of Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin, making it one of the principal sites of Russian cultural memory. The programme reads the lavra as the meeting point of Orthodox devotion, imperial statecraft and the artistic pantheon of a nation.
