The Donskoy Monastery was founded in 1591 on the site where the Russian military camp was located, in honor of the miraculous deliverance of Moscow from the invasion of the Crimean Khan Kazy Giray. In 1745, the monastery became stauropegial - it is directly subordinate to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
Outstanding figures of Russian culture are buried at the monastery cemetery - P.Ya. Chaadaev, V.O. Klyuchevsky, V.F. Odoevsky, O.I. Bove, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, and others. All-Russian His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, who was in custody in the monastery and died in 1925, is buried in the Small Cathedral of the monastery. In the Sretensky temple of the monastery there is a tomb of Georgian kings and princes.
In 1926 the monastery was closed, its premises were given over to an anti-religious museum, a boarding school and a dairy farm. One of the cemetery churches was rebuilt into a crematorium. Since 1934, the monastery housed the Museum of Architecture, where parts of Moscow churches were brought to be demolished. Now in the monastery there are 6 high reliefs from the old Cathedral of Christ the Savior, part of the design of the Triumphal Gate.
During the Great Patriotic War, with the money of believers and clergy, 40 tanks were built with the name of Dmitry Donskoy on their towers. In memory of this, military equipment stands in front of the monastery - the Dmitry Donskoy tank, a cannon and armored personnel carriers.
In 1991 the monastery was returned to the Moscow Patriarchate. In total, there are 11 Temples and a chapel in the monastery complex.