Since 1932 it has been part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture [ru], which refers to it as the Necropolis of the Masters of Art (Russian: Некрополь мастеров искусств).

Particularly significant interments were those of Mikhail Glinka in 1857, Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1881, Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Borodin in the 1880s, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1893.

During the Soviet period the cemetery was earmarked for development into a museum necropolis, envisaged primarily as a landscaped park, with strategically placed memorials to important figures of Russian history.

During the 1930s many important Russian composers, painters, sculptors, writers and poets were exhumed from their original resting places across the city, and brought, with or without their monuments, to be reburied in the Tikhvin cemetery.

Several more burials of particularly important artists took place during the Soviet period, as the cemetery established a role as a kind of national pantheon.

The cemetery is located close to Alexander Nevsky Square, to the right of the pathway leading from the Gate Church to the River Monastyrka [ru].

[1] The new cemetery, initially called the "New Lazarevsky" (Russian: Ново-Лазаревским), was established in the eastern part of the plot of land, between the pathway to the monastery, and the consistory building, enclosed with a wooden fence.

[1][2] The brothers D. M. and N. M. Polezhaev, wealthy merchants, funded the construction of a cemetery church, laid down on 26 September 1869 and built to the design of architect N. P.

[2] With the exception of Pushkin, all would eventually be buried in the Lavra's cemeteries; Krylov, Vyazemsky, Pletnyov and Olenin in the Tikhvin, and Tolstoy in the Lazarevskoe.

[2] In 1857 the remains of the composer Mikhail Glinka were returned from Berlin and buried in the cemetery, with a grand monument erected two years later to the design of architect I. I. Gornostayev, with sculptures by Nikolay Laveretsky.

[2][11] During the 1880s composers Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Borodin were buried in the northern part of the grounds, with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky following in 1893.

[2][12][13][14] Eventually all the members of the group of composers termed "The Five", or the "Mighty Handful"; Mussorgsky, Borodin, as well as Mily Balakirev, César Cui and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, were buried in the cemetery.

The cemetery was officially closed for burials in 1927, though they continued until 1932, and it was decided to turn it into a necropolis museum, displaying historically and artistically significant graves.

[1] The Funeral Affair Trust was established to run the necropolis museum, including removing abandoned gravestones for sale as building materials.

The Funeral Affair Trust was authorised to acquire and transfer important graves and monuments from other cemeteries and churches across the city.

[1] The cemetery reconstruction project concentrated the representatives of each type of art together, with even monuments that had been in the Tikhvin originally being moved to fit the new organisational scheme.

[2] The organisers were faced with the problem that despite designating the cemetery to be the artists' necropolis, historically the Tikhvin had primarily been the burial ground of statesmen, military leaders, scientists, and composers.

[1] In 1968 Fyodor Dostoevsky's wife Anna Dostoevskaya was reburied next to her husband, while theatre director Georgy Tovstonogov was interred in the cemetery in 1989.