Annunciation Cathedral (Благовещенский собор) is a Russian Orthodox church that was constructed in Gorokhovets in 1770 on a place of an older wooden temple. It was the main house of prayer in Gorokhovets. Money to construct this cathedral was donated by a local merchant Semen Ershov. It became the tallest building in the city and to this day it remains the tallest structure. It is covered by five onion shaped domes. The dome shape is supposed to represent eternal fire of faith while five domes represent Jesus Christ and four writers of four Gospels. Frescoes of the church were badly damaged during rule of the atheist Soviet rule, but some original icons are still visible in various corners of the church.
The cathedral appeared in the city suburb at the
beginning of the 17th century. According to the census books of
Gorokhovets in 1646, the Cathedral Church of the Annunciation was
already listed as "in a guarded place" and was "dreveny top with a
tent."
In 1700, instead of it, a stone Annunciation Cathedral was
erected, crowned with five domes and roofed with iron on four slopes. It
rises on the central city square, as if pushing aside all the diversity
of buildings crowding nearby and blocking the vain polyphony of city
life with the power of its epic sound.
This is exactly how Semyon
Ershov wanted to see him, when he beat his forehead and gave a lot of
money for its construction. To people for a feast for the eyes, to
glorify yourself! The merchant gave gifts to the cathedral as best he
could. As early as 1685, he made a rich (for that time) contribution in
the form of silver vessels.
The merchant Ivan Shiryaev did not
lag behind him. In 1710, he presented a silver ark in the form of a
church and a silver chara in the form of a grape brush, which is
described in detail in cathedral books. Zakomaras on the facades had
paintings around the entire perimeter of the cathedral and depicted the
12 most important Christian holidays of the year.
In the Soviet
years, frescoes were often whitewashed, as the cathedral stands on the
central square, where festive demonstrations took place. However, just a
week later, the faces of the saints appeared again.
Mention
should also be made of the unique western doors of the Annunciation
Cathedral, which have now been removed and stored in the storerooms of
the Gorokhovets Historical and Architectural Museum. Their forged doors
are overlaid with painted mica of red and blue colors along the birch
bark, and from above, like a cobweb, they are covered with openwork
ornaments made of perforated metal. Only in a few cities of Russia you
can see such fabulous splendor.
Next to the cathedral is a small
winter church of John the Baptist, built at the beginning of the 18th
century. Perhaps, you begin to feel the full significance of the
buildings of the cathedral ensemble most fully when you find yourself
under the low, as if crushed vaults of this temple. Its interior is
chamber. Outside, the church is more ornate. This is achieved through
richly decorated architraves, which have slender semi-columns with
magnificent Corinthian capitals and exquisite "shells" on the headband.
At the same time as the cathedral, a separate bell tower was built.
Slender and tall (its height is 37 m), it occupies a dominant position
not only in the ensemble of cathedral buildings, but throughout the
city. It is hipped, of the “oct on quadruple” type and has an unusually
low quadruple in comparison with the slender and light-proportioned
octagon. This is a purely Gorokhovets feature of the building. As it
should be, the cathedral bell tower was the center of the square and had
a representative appearance, which was greatly facilitated by the city
clock-chimes installed on it once.
To the southeast of the
cathedral is a chapel. This is the latest building of the ensemble. It
was erected simultaneously with the unpreserved fence in 1887 at the
expense of the merchant M. F. Sapozhnikov in memory of the murdered
liberator Emperor Alexander II, who visited Gorokhovets and made
contributions to the main city cathedral. The facades of the chapel are
richly saturated with decor, made in the forms of the “Russian” style
that was widespread at that time.