In the city of Vladimir, there is the Assumption Church, which
has become a unique monument of Russian architecture. It is known
that the preparatory work related to the construction took place in
1644. The Church of the Dormition was built in 1649 with a generous
donation from the townspeople: Vasiliy the Overthrown, his son, the
son of Semion Somov, as well as Grigory and Andrey Denisovs. The
listed people were rich people from a noble family, merchants and
founders of merchant families of the pre-revolutionary city of
Vladimir.
Detailed descriptions of the Assumption Church have
come down to our time, which became a symbol of the ancient Russian
art of Vladimir in the 17th century. The temple looked incredibly
beautiful on the southern edge of the majestic city heights, because
it was here that white-stone cathedrals were erected back in the
12th century.
The Church of
the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the completion of the
eastern wing of the facade of the city of Vladimir. Most likely, it was
precisely because of the low relief, in accordance with urban buildings,
that the architects decided to build a high temple, the crowning of
which was carried out with a bunch of large-scale and closely set five
onion-shaped domes. The church is perfectly visible among the city
buildings, and the view of it opens even from behind the river.
The temple is made in the style that was most typical for the Yaroslavl
and Moscow churches. A distinctive feature of the church was its high
white stone walls, crowned with many kokoshniks. The Assumption Church
is a temple equipped with a refectory and a bell tower located at its
end. The articulation of the quadruple is carried out with the help of
shoulder blades, and the slender quadrangle is completed in the form of
a large cornice with hollows of graceful kokoshniks. Above the
kokoshniks of “white” tinned iron rise five onion cupolas, which were
originally covered with a scaly wooden plowshare, which gradually
acquired a silvery color. From the western and northern sides, the
church is surrounded by an open arcade of the porch. All available
entrances have stairs. The head of the refectory room used to be
glittering with tiles painted green. The lower quarter of the bell tower
was used as an arrangement for the first ringing tier, cut through by
wide semicircular arches. A distinctive feature of the bell tower was
the elevation of a high “pillar” of the quadrangle above the quadrangle,
which raises the ringing tier, while the architect lowered the octagon
somewhat, but the tier came out very elegant.
At the Assumption
Church there was a small monastery, for which reason it was almost
completely surrounded by residential and service buildings, as well as a
fence in which there were large stone gates. The holy two-span gates
ended with a pair of tents equipped with small green tiled domes. It
turns out that the temple was part of a picturesque ensemble of stone
and wooden buildings located nearby.
According to the records of
an old inventory, the original temple interior was also elegant and
bright. The walls of the porch were previously completely covered with
colored painting, and its fragments are still kept near the western and
northern entrances. In the past, there were two stoves in the refectory
room, which were lined with elegant patterned tiles. The premises of the
temple are distinguished not only by their large size, but also by their
extraordinary lordship. Temple iconostases were bordered with embossed
silver ribbons, and the doors were painted with gold leaf. In one of the
museums in the city of Vladimir, so-called "skinny candles" are kept,
which give an idea of the decorative decoration of the Assumption
Church. Cylinders made of wax, standing on white stone pedestals, became
a special decoration of the temple. The surface of such cylinders was
covered with colored wax, which was applied as an ornament. It is known
that with the help of wax, Vladimir architects were able to perpetuate
their names inside the church.
The Assumption Church became a
vivid example of the fact that even the city of Vladimir, located on the
outskirts, was not aloof from the then contemporary folk art that was
progressing in Moscow. Today the temple belongs to the Old Believer
Orthodox Church.