Nikolskoe Cemetery

The cemetery was opened in 1863, to the east of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the main church of the monastery. It was the third cemetery in the complex, after the original Lazarevskoe Cemetery in the 1710s, and the Tikhvin Cemetery in 1823. The Spiritual Council noted that "the Lavra cemetery is not open to everyone, as are the city cemeteries, but only a few persons from the government service and persons with honorary titles are buried here." Wealthy patrons commissioned large chapels and crypts, with elaborate decorations and reliefs from prominent artists such as Nikolay Laveretsky, Ivan Podozerov, and . Plans in 1896 to build a larger cemetery church in the Byzantine style by architect L. P. Andreyev came to nothing, as did a similar project in 1908, despite a donation of 10 thousand rubles by the ruling metropolitan. ==Soviet period and later use==

, who died in 1893 The Nikolskoe Cemetery, unlike the Lazarevskoe and Tikhvin cemeteries, was not designated as a museum during the Soviet period, as it was not considered to have any particular artistic or historical value. It was closed in 1927 and sporadic efforts were made during the 1930s and 1940s to eliminate the cemetery, and the graves of several prominent figures were transferred to the Lazarevskoe, Tikhvin and Volkovo cemeteries; including Vera Komissarzhevskaya, Ivan Goncharov, Anton Rubinstein and Boris Kustodiev. Other graves were lost or destroyed. The Church of St Nicholas was closed on 10 December 1932, and it was planned to turn it into a crematorium. A furnace for burning bodies was tested in 1934, but ultimately the plan was abandoned and instead the church became a warehouse and workshop. A 1940 survey by the identified some two hundred gravestones worthy of preservation. Severely neglected by the 1970s, plans were drawn up to restore the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The Nikolskoe Cemetery was restored and landscaped, with a columbarium built between 1979 and 1980. The cemetery church was repaired and re-consecrated on 22 April 1985. The size of the cemetery was somewhat reduced with the construction of an overpass for the Alexander Nevsky Bridge through the western part of the cemetery. Burials resumed in the late 1970s, and since 1989 a comprehensive restoration of monuments has been underway. ==Burials==

The cemetery contains a wide selection of Saint Petersburg society from the late nineteen and early twentieth centuries. Buried here are the singers Antonina Abarinova, Natalia Iretskaya, and Anastasia Vyaltseva; playwright Dmitry Averkiyev; literary figures Fyodor Batyushkov, Evgeny Feoktistov, Aleksandra Ishimova, Alexandra Jacobi, Evgeny Karnovich, Fyodor Koni, Nestor Kotlyarevsky, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Boleslav Markevich, Mikhail Rosenheim, Sergey Shubinsky, Aleksey Suvorin, and Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal; artists Nikolay Karazin, Konstantin Makovsky, and Mikhail Mikeshin; composers Nicolai Soloviev and Feofil Tolstoy; architects Nikolai Chagin and Vasily Kenel; dancer Askold Makarov; actor Nikolai Sazonov; and director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky. , Saint Petersburg's first democratically elected mayor Important statesmen and politicians of Imperial Russia buried in the cemetery include Fyodor Kokoshkin, Aleksandr Nelidov, and Ivan Tolstoy; while military leaders include generals Dmitry Bagration, Sergei Gershelman, Grigory Golitsyn, Roman Kondratenko, Nikolai Linevich, Nikolai Obruchev, Alexei Polivanov, Erast Tsytovich, and Pyotr Vannovsky; and admirals Aleksei Birilev, Grigory Butakov, and Ivan Grigorovich. ==References==