Mary Magdalene Monastery

The Monastery of St. Mary Magdalene is an Orthodox female monastery in Vilnius. Since 1923, the only women's monastery in the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Lithuania. Established by imperial decree on 9 November 1864, during the intensification of Russification in the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, it initially occupied the buildings of the former Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary on Ross' Street. Its church was adapted into the monastic Church of St. Mary Magdalene. The Vilnius community consisted of nuns from the St. Alexis Convent in Moscow, who ran a school, an orphanage, as well as workshops for making liturgical vestments and writing icons at the monastery. The monastery operated until 1915 when, succumbing to the panic fueled by Tsarist propaganda, the residing nuns (114 nuns and novices) left the monastery, opting for exile. After World War I, the Visitation nuns returned to Vilnius, regaining their convent on Ross' Street. Upon the initiative of Bishop Eleutherius Bogojawleński of Vilnius and Lithuania, Orthodox nuns moved to one of the buildings of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Vilnius, and in 1937 to the former school buildings near the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky. They were forced to leave by the Soviet authorities in 1960. From then on, the monastic community resided in one of the wings of the complex of the Monastery of the Ho

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