Armyanskoye Kladbishche

Armenian Smolensk Cemetery was established in 1791. It is located on the north bank of the river Smolenka, next to the Orthodox and Lutheran cemetery Smolenka for consecrated in 1797 by the Church of St. Harutiun. At the end of XIX century there were about 400 graves. In 1923, the church has ceased to operate - the Soviet authorities closed it, turning it into a sculpture studio. In the future, many of the tombstones were moved to the City Museum of Sculpture. After 1939 the cemetery new graves have been conducted. In 1988, when the church was returned to believers Armenians began restoration work tombstones.

Located between the Smolenka River embankment and Kim Avenue. You can get there from the station. m. "Vasileostrovskaya" by minibus No. 249A. Armenian merchants settled in St. Petersburg soon after the city was founded. Peter's decree of 1711 ordered "the Armenians as possible to caress and facilitate, what is decent, in order to give hunt for more of their arrival." The Armenian community was gradually increasing and in ten years there were already thirty households. The Synod on September 29, 1725 ordered the Armenians to have a house of prayer in St. Petersburg, but the church was never built at that time. In the second half of the 18th century, the collegiate councilor Ivan Lazarevich Lazarev became the head of the Armenian colony in St. Petersburg. It was he who, possessing enormous wealth, rallied the small St. Petersburg community and in 1770 submitted a petition for the construction of a separate Armenian-Gregorian church. A year later, according to the project of the architect Yu.M. Felten on Nevsky Prospect, opposite the Gostiny Dvor, the construction of the Church of St. Catherine began. The cemetery church was conceived as the tomb of a twenty-three-year-old Guards officer, adjutant of Prince G.A. Potemkin. A place for the cemetery was allocated on Vasilievsky Island, next to the Smolensk Lutheran cemetery. So in 1791 an Armenian cemetery was opened on the territory of St. Petersburg. Around 1797, a church designed by Yu.M. Feltena was consecrated in the name of the Resurrection of Christ. Ivan Lazarev was buried in 1801 in the Resurrection Church next to his son, and the tombstone, erected a year later, became a monument to his father and son (project of academician I.P. Martos). The few Armenian noble families of St. Petersburg were closely related by kinship. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 30 burials of the Lazarevs and other noble families of Armenian origin in the church: Abamelik, Delyanovs, Sumbatovs, related to the Lazarevs. In the 19th century, a small Armenian cemetery was formed around the church; at a distance there were vegetable gardens that belonged to members of the community. The insignificant size of the St. Petersburg Armenian colony and, consequently, the burials, which were not numerous at first, allowed the graves to be positioned fairly freely, orienting them strictly from west to east. The passages between them were wide and even, so there was no need to set up special paths and alleys. Like other Smolensk cemeteries, the Armenian-Gregorian cemetery suffered greatly from floods, after which the territory had to be landscaped and destroyed monuments had to be restored. The social composition of the persons buried in the cemetery, to some extent, reflects the professional employment of the Armenians who lived in the city. These are merchants (mostly immigrants from Julfa), military and officials, teachers, doctors, translators. The absence of burials of representatives of the lower classes is most likely explained by the fragility of the corresponding memorial signs. By 1894, there were four hundred and ten graves in the cemetery. The modern cemetery is a small necropolis with an area of ​​about half a hectare, enclosed by a cast-iron grate. Among the low sarcophagi and slabs, three monumental structures stand out, emphasizing the flatness of the entire territory. This is a two-meter granite altar on the grave of I.M. Aramyants and two chapels in the western part of the cemetery, decorated with granite carvings and cast iron bars. The first chapel from the entrance is presumably considered the Lalaev family's crypt, the family affiliation of the second is currently not determined. There are family burials in the cemetery. Some monuments dating back to the early 19th century are of undoubted historical interest. These are mainly sarcophagi and inclined granite slabs with extensive carved inscriptions, mostly in Armenian. During Soviet times, the church was closed. In the spring of 1988 the church was returned to the believers, the gradual improvement of the cemetery began, and on October 8 the first divine service was held in the renovated church. After restoration, the temple was consecrated in 1989. The building of the former almshouse houses the residence of the bishop of the New Nakhichevan and Russian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church.