The Deposition of the Robe Convent is located at once outside northern border of New Settlement on an opposite edge of a gully.
Inside the Convent leads the Holy Gates. Here we have a fine example of the Suzdal architects' feeling for overall composition and the relationship of each building with those around it and the town as a whole. Most specimens of early Russian architecture are anonymous, like the old folk songs and epics. Beginning way back in the distant past architecture gradually developed over the centuries accumulating the experience of successive generations. It is not until the seventeenth century, when feudalism was beginning to disintegrate in Russia, that we increasingly come across the names of individual architects, indicating a growing recognition of the value and importance of the creative artist for his own sake. We do, however, know the names of three late seventeenth-century architects, who nearly always worked together: Ivan Mamin, Andrei Shmakov and Ivan Gryaznov. They were the builders of the Convent of the Deposition of the Robe and quite possibly belonged to its serfs. We have an excellent example of their work in the Convent's magnificent Holy Gates built in 1688. Their white facade has two broad entrances varying in shape and size. The arch of the larger entrance is almost semicircular whereas the other one is shallower. The abutments are decorated with cornices like pillars. A staircase set in the wall leads up to a small chamber above the vaulted ceiling.
The facade is decorated with deeply recessed niches lined inside with coloured tiles and the central icon niche above the lower arch is of similar design. The top of the facade is decorated with a band of tiles in square frames and an indented cornice. We can find the same ornamental motifs used on the short octagonal bases of the towers, which also have small windows. On the left-hand tower these are set in plain niches but on the right they have decorative surrounds accentuating the importance of this tower, which stood over the main entrance. The building as a whole is very fine.
Just behind the gates stands the Cathedral of the Deposition of the Robe, restored by Olga Guseva in 1964. Its exact date is unknown, but it clearly belongs to the first half of the sixteenth century. The north chapel was added in 1586. It is possible that the Cathedral was built during the 1520s by boyar Ivan Shigonya-Podzhogin.
It is a comparatively small building and one of the earliest specimens of pillarless Churches in Central Russian architecture, covered with a vaulted roof divided into three sections reflected in the zakomaras on the exterior.
The smooth surface of the outer walls is pierced by plain windows and encircled by a frieze of large pentagonal niches bordered with strips of fine moulding. The top of the dome drums is decorated with a matching motif of double niches. The Cathedral's three-domed roof may have been modelled on the original roof of the Cathedral of the Nativity in the Kremlin.
The Cathedral must have seemed excessively austere and restrained at the end of the seventeenth century, which is probably why Mamin, Gryaznov and Shmakov added galleries to its south and west walls in 1688 at the same time as the Holy Gates were built. Here their passion for rich adornments displayed itself to the full. The main west wall of the Church porch was particularly lavishly embellished with intricate pilasters, a magnificent portal and the rich interplay of colour from white, green, yellow and brown glazed tiles.
The finest specimen of their work and possibly the best seventeenth-century building in Suzdal was the Trinity Cathedral, situated in the Northeast part of Convent. But to a great regret the Cathedral was not kept
The tall Convent bell-tower, which was built in 1813-1819 under the supervision of the Suzdal mason Kuzmin, was spoilt at the beginning of the twentieth century by cement plastering which seems to drag down its soaring tiers that repeat the motif of the portico with pairs of columns gradually decreasing in size. When the bell-tower was restored, it was repainted in the original colour scheme of yellow walls with white adornments.