[citation needed] Since 1983, it has functioned as the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox church and the official residence of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'.

[citation needed] Danilov Monastery is claimed to have been founded in the late 13th century by Alexander Nevsky's son Daniel.

In 1606, the rebels led by Ivan Bolotnikov and Istoma Pashkov collided with the army of Vasili IV not far from the monastery.

In 1607, an impostor by the name of Ileyka Muromets, who had pretended to be tsarevich Peter (son of Feodor I of Russia), was executed next to Danilov Monastery.

The monasterial sacristy and treasury, however, had been transported to Vologda and Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra shortly before the French occupied Moscow.

Apart from the 17th-century defensive towers and walls, the surviving buildings include the katholikon (main church), the Neoclassical cathedral of the Holy Trinity (1833–1838), the Baroque gate church and belltower of St Simeon Stylites (1681, 1732), a group of 19th-century dwellings for monks and the father superior, and the extensive modern residence of the Holy Synod and the Patriarch (1988).

Right next door is the large parish church of the Renovation of the Temple in Jerusalem, built in 1832–1837 to Neoclassical designs by Fyodor Shestakov.

When the monastery was closed in 1929 and 1930, its bell set was saved from Communist melting through the purchase by American industrialist Charles R. Crane.

[3] Russian industrialist Viktor Vekselberg, famous for buying up a number of Faberge Eggs, agreed to pay for the repatriation of the 18 bells and for the cost of casting replacements of them in Russia to be hung at Harvard.