Surrounding the Novodevichy Convent is a massive defensive wall resembling the Kremlin’s with 12 battle towers. The four in the corners are round like this silhouette. Also known as the Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery, it was built in the 16th century as a noble ladies cloister and for royal women forced to become nuns. After surviving two attacks, it became an orphanage, a woman’s penal colony, a museum and apartments before becoming a nunnery again in 1995.
