The convent is two miles distant from the Kremlin, but also on the river bank, though a tank serving as a moat actually separates it from the present raised embankment of the Moskva. The walls were built by the same Italians who completed the walls of the Kremlin, and are of the same type, but round and square towers alternate and both have some of the heavy florid decoration so common in Moscow. The single and double dropped-arch is most conspicuous, and the quaintness of the architecture is accentuated by the glaring disparity of the colouring--dead white for the walls and interior of the open turrets, dark Indian red for the tops of the towers and masonry above the corbels of the machecoules. The belfry is of five lofty stages _en retraite_ surmounted with a gilded bulbous dome and immense cross; its colours are pink and white with neutral facings: yellow, green, rose-pink picked out with white or darker tints are used for the other churches; that over the gateway being white with green roof, and both green and blue are used lavishly elsewhere for the roofs of the buildings within the enclosure, which together with the gold on domes and crosses, gives to the convent-fortress a beauty that is wholly eastern. The two churches Vasili founded have been preserved and others added. They are-- Church of the Assumption, with a chapel dedicated to the Holy Ghost. Church of St Ambrose, of Milan. Church of The Transfiguration of the Virgin. Church of The Protection of the Virgin. Chapel of SS. Balaam and Jehosaphat, beneath the belfry. Church of St James the Apostle, founded in gratitude of the preservation of the monastery on St James's day 1812. The cathedral church with chapels to the Archangel Michael; to SS. Prokhor and Nikanor; to St Sophia and the sister graces, Vera, Nadejda, and Lubov (Faith, Hope and Charity). Here the daughters of Alexis Mikhailovich are buried, as also Eudoxia (Helena), first wife of Peter I. On the ikonostas is a very early copy of the Iberian Mother of God, before that ikon was taken to Smolensk in 1456. Its history is unimportant. Julia the wife of its founder was forced to take the veil here in 1563 when Vasili intended to marry Helena Glinski; Boris Godunov and his sister Irene lived within it during the six weeks following upon the death of Theodore I. Notwithstanding its apparent strength, during the times of trouble Vasili Shoviski after various struggles to retain it, was forced to give it up to the invading [Illustration: NOVO DEVICHI CONVENT]