Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery
Founded 1771 · about 25 hectares · Preobrazhensky Val, eastern Moscow
How to get there: Metro Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad, a short walk
Preobrazhenskoye dates from the 1771 plague, like several of Moscow’s oldest cemeteries, and grew around the Old Believer community of Preobrazhenskoye. It later took in a large Jewish section and one of the city’s major Second World War memorial areas.
For families abroad, the Jewish section is the reason most enquiries reach us: many families emigrated in the 1970s–90s and left graves here with nobody to visit them.
What grave care at Preobrazhenskoye actually involves
Jewish burial custom shapes what is appropriate here, and we follow the family’s wishes rather than a standard template: no flowers where flowers are not wanted, stones placed on the monument if you ask, and the plot left tidy rather than decorated.
The older sections are dense and shaded, with 19th- and early 20th-century stone that needs gentle treatment. Hebrew inscriptions in particular are often shallow-cut and wear badly — we photograph them at high resolution and in raking light so they can actually be read by the family.
Where a family wants the inscription legible again, refilling the existing cut is possible. Re-cutting a historic Hebrew inscription is specialist work and we say honestly when it is beyond routine care.
Services and prices at Preobrazhenskoye
- Grave search by name — from ₽1,500 (about $17). Needed whenever the plot number has been lost.
- Standard clean-up — litter and old wreaths removed, weeding and grass cutting, headstone and fence washed, mound levelled. From ₽3,000 (about $34).
- Headstone cleaning — from ₽4,500 (about $50), gentle products only.
- Seasonal package — four scheduled visits a year with a photo report after each, ₽17,000 (about $135).
- Engraving — adding a name and dates to an existing monument, or restoring worn lettering. Layout sent for your approval before anything is cut.
- Monuments and granite complexes — a new headstone, plinth, kerb and paving, or resetting a monument that has started to lean. Quoted after we measure and photograph the plot.
Every order ends with a dated before/after photo report including the GPS position of the plot, and you pay after you receive it. Full price list — services & prices.
Questions we are asked about Preobrazhenskoye
Can you place a stone on the monument on our behalf?
Yes, and we photograph it in place. Tell us if there is a particular date you want it done.
Can you read and transcribe a Hebrew inscription?
We photograph it at high resolution so that it can be read and transcribed. We do not offer translation as a service and we prefer to be straightforward about that.
The family left in 1991 and nobody has been since. Is anything left?
Often more than people expect. We locate the plot, photograph its present condition, and let you decide what to do — before, not after, you pay for work.
Order care at Preobrazhenskoye from anywhere
Write to us with the full name of the person buried and, if you have it, the section and plot number. If you do not have it, say so — locating the grave is a normal part of the job. We agree a payment method that works for your country when the order is confirmed, including payment through relatives in Russia, and payment is due after the photo report.
You can write in English — we reply in English.
Other Moscow cemeteries we serve
All Moscow cemeteries · Grave search by name · Order a monument · How it works
Русская версия — Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery на русском
