Restoration of the tombstone of Princess Elena from the Church of the St.- Theodore of Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra

The article discusses the process of restoration of a stone tombstone from the burial of the court aristocracy of the Russian Empire of the XIX century. The monument is notable for its location, which symbolically and culturologically associates it with the complex of funerary monuments of the necropolis of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, representing objects of cultural heritage. The need to restore the tombstone generates the need to study the biography of the deceased, a historical person associated with various significant events. It is important that the author of the article is a restorer, an active participant in the restoration of stone slabs, a specialist in the restoration of stone as a material of architectural monuments, sculpture and applied art. The article analyzes in detail the methods of restoration of objects of this kind, describes the processes of clearing the stone, the mechanical connection of disparate fragments into a single whole. Much attention is paid to the technical and technological aspects of restoration, chemistry and physics of the materials used. The restoration of the slab resulted in the possibility of accurate reading of its text, made in Georgian and Russian.