Fire breaks out at Moscow's Novodevichy Convent
![The Novodevichy Convent bell tower on fire.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/wYbyJuxKGz9Hfk63vzVb2g-415-80.jpg)
The bell tower at the Novodevichy Convent, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Moscow, caught on fire Sunday night.
The convent was built in the 16th and 17th centuries, and its cemetery is the resting place for Anton Chekhov, Nikita Khrushchev, and Boris Yeltsin. Law enforcement officials told Russian media that the fire started 30 meters above the ground, and went all the way up to 70 meters high, The Guardian reports. Alexander Gavrilov at the Moscow branch of the emergency situations ministry told journalists that no one was injured and that the interior of the bell tower was not damaged. The convent is undergoing renovations, and earlier in the day, workers had been gold-plating the tower's cupola, according a spokesperson for the contractor, Stroikomplekt.
The Interfax news agency reports that the city's cultural heritage department said the renovations were being conducted in violation of safety regulations, and that likely the caused fire. Because the convent is under federal control, the department said it could not take the construction company off the job, despite noted violations. —Catherine Garcia
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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