The church was closed and repurposed, burials ceased, and some memorials of more significant figures were moved to other cemeteries, while others were lost or deliberately destroyed.

[2] It was first called the Zasobornoye Cemetery (Russian: Засоборное), but became known as the Nikolskoe after the construction of the Church of St. Nicholas between 1868 and 1871 to the design of diocesan architect Grigory Karpov.

"[2] Part of the cemetery also served as the burial site for the Monastery's monks and the metropolitans of Saint Petersburg, leading to the name Bratskoe (Russian: Братское), or "Brotherhood" section.

[4] It became a prestigious burial location, and careful attention was taken in the planning and layout, which was more regular than the early cemeteries, and included a pond in the northern part.

A path leads from the main entrance of the cemetery church across a bridge and aligned with the apse of the Trinity Cathedral, forming a longitudinal axis.

[1] Plans in 1896 to build a larger cemetery church in the Byzantine style by architect L. P. Andreyev came to nothing, as did a similar project in 1908, despite a donation of 10 thousand rubles by the ruling metropolitan.

Buried here are the singers Antonina Abarinova, Natalia Iretskaya, and Anastasia Vyaltseva; playwright Dmitry Averkiyev; literary figures Fyodor Batyushkov, Evgeny Feoktistov, Aleksandra Ishimova, Alexandra Jacobi, Evgeny Karnovich, Fyodor Koni, Nestor Kotlyarevsky, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Boleslav Markevich, Mikhail Rosenheim, Sergey Shubinsky, Aleksey Suvorin, and Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal; artists Nikolay Karazin, Konstantin Makovsky, and Mikhail Mikeshin; composers Nicolai Soloviev and Feofil Tolstoy; architects Nikolai Chagin and Vasily Kenel; dancer Askold Makarov; actor Nikolai Sazonov; and director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky.

[5] Important statesmen and politicians of Imperial Russia buried in the cemetery include Fyodor Kokoshkin, Aleksandr Nelidov, and Ivan Tolstoy; while military leaders include generals Dmitry Bagration, Sergei Gershelman, Grigory Golitsyn, Roman Kondratenko, Nikolai Linevich, Nikolai Obruchev, Alexei Polivanov, Erast Tsytovich, and Pyotr Vannovsky; and admirals Aleksei Birilev, Grigory Butakov, and Ivan Grigorovich.