Lazarevskoe Cemetery

Since 1932 it has been part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture [ru], which refers to it as the Necropolis of the Eighteenth Century (Russian: Некрополь XVIII века).

Graves deemed less significant were cleared away, while monuments and remains considered more artistically or historically important were moved into the cemetery from churches and burial grounds that were in the process of being demolished.

Today the cemetery operates as a museum, displaying the funerary sculpture of a wide range of important artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

[1][2][4] By the end of the eighteenth century burial was extended to the wealthy merchant class, in exchange for the payment of large sums of money.

The cemetery includes funerary monuments by Ivan Martos, Mikhail Kozlovsky, Vasily Demut-Malinovsky, Andrey Voronikhin, Fedot Shubin, Fyodor Tolstoy and other masters.

[1][2] During the Soviet period the cemetery was closed and placed under state protection, administered by the society "Old Petersburg" (Russian: «Старый Петербург»).

[5] A group of Soviet writers visited the cemetery in 1934, and with the support of Maxim Gorky, declared it of great cultural and historical significance.

[8] The remains and funerary monuments of architect Jean-François Thomas de Thomon and mathematician Leonhard Euler had been transferred from the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery in 1940 and 1956 respectively.

[4] The Church of St Lazarus (Russian: Церковь Праведного Лазаря) was built in 1717, and is located along the banks of the Monastyrka River [ru].

[1] Sheremetev, who had scandalised society by marrying Praskovia Zhemchugova, an actress and opera singer of serf origins, arranged for a lavish funeral on her death in 1803, and for requiem services in the following years.

Burials continued to take place in the church vaults, with the last being Ekaterina Vasilyevna Dashkova, the widow of the writer and statesman of the Arzamas Society Dmitry Dashkov, in 1890.

[11] The remains of Count Ivan Laval [ru], the father-in-law of Decembrist Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy were reburied in the church, but his monument was never installed.

These included military figures such as Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev and General Adam Veyde, and the Court Physician Robert Erskine.

[1] The family vaults of the Beloselsky-Belozersky, Trubetskoy, Volkonsky and Naryshkin ancient noble houses were located here, as were those of some of the prominent merchant dynasties such as the Demidovs and Yakovlevs.

A whole epoch, a whole world of obsolete ideas, almost all the court society of Elizabeth, Catherine and Paul were buried in the small space of the Lazarevskoe cemetery".