Holy Dormition convent is located in the village of Staraya Ladoga, on the banks of the Volkhov river, North of the stone fortress. This is one of the oldest monasteries of the North-West of Russia.

The monastery ensemble is mentioned already in the XV century, and the date of his birth is considered to be the year 1156. At first the monastery was male, then the monastery has been transformed into a female. On its territory is fenced by a brick wall, can be counted a dozen wooden and stone buildings. Most of the buildings survived to the present time, dates back to the XIX century: it is a brick wall with four towers and three gates, the refectory, the hospital building, vehicle shed, private house, Laundry, housing for the nuns. Hospital building and the house of the Church of the cross were designed by the famous architect A. M. Gornostayev in 1861-1862.

The Central attraction of the monastery of the assumption is assumption Church. This is the northernmost of the churches of the pre-Mongol period of Kievan Rus was built in 1156 on the ground that was once in the possession of St. Anna of Novgorod. According to one legend, it was at her behest and was founded by the Holy Dormition monastery.

The building has been completely preserved. It has a length of 18 meters width – 14 meters and the height is 19 meters. The Cathedral could accommodate more than a dozen visitors. Temple walls are painted, but the painting remained bad. Restorers found fragments of frescoes in the Cathedral, but also on the territory of the monastery. Today found about 13,000 fragments of frescoes, representing almost 35 sqm assumption Cathedral was built in Novgorod craftsmen who created an architectural masterpiece, which brought together around all the buildings of the assumption monastery.
In census books dated over the years 1499-1500, there is a description Bogoroditsky monastery immaculate from Ladoga, who owned many lands and villages.

In the 11th year of the XVII century the monastery was plundered by Swedish troops. But 6 years later the crone she gathered the scattered sisters and began its revival. In 1702, during the worst fire in Ladoga, all the buildings of the monastery, except the hard-hit assumption of a stone Church, was burned.

In 1718 the Uspensky monastery was destined to become a refuge high the disgraced wife of Emperor Peter I of tsarina Evdokiya Feodorovna Lopukhina. Behind her in the monastery was exiled Evdokia Hannibal. Then, during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, here were relatives of the Decembrists.

The benefactors of the convent were famous in Russia philanthropist Alex R. Tomilov, the estate of which the North side was adjacent to the convent, count Dmitri Nikolaevich Sheremetev, the wife of Tsar Alexander II, Maria and other famous people.

In the period from 1779 to 1822, he abbess of the monastery was celebrated chigumira Eupraxia, were simultaneously vicar and Smolny convent. In 1856-1895 years the monastery was under the control of abbess of Dionysus. At the time it was built many stone buildings. In the middle of the XIX century, the monastery accepted the well-known poetess Elizabeth Shakhov (nun Elizabeth).

Before the revolution the monastery was kept two wonder-working icons of the great Martyr Barbara and of the Dormition of the Mother of God. At the monastery ran a school. The cemetery of the monastery have not survived, the last surviving burial records were destroyed in the restoration of assumption Church. Its chancel was buried abbess Eupraxia, now her grave is lost. On the right side of the altar survived only a tombstone on the grave of the mother superior of Dionysus (1799-1895), who was the acting mother superior in the convent for almost 40 years.

Since 1917 the monastery was headed by the abbess Porphyria. In addition to the buildings, erected in the mid-nineteenth century, they were made of wood and stone cell buildings, a Marina, a hotel for pilgrims, the Church of St. Alexis the man of God in the monastery cemetery, stone building for the clergy and chapel on the Varangian street. In the monastery served approximately 200 sisters. In 1922 the monastery was abolished.

In 2002, the ancient monastery was returned to the ROC. In 2003 was organized by the nursing community. Currently, the monastery is operating, continues to recover.