The Church of the Conception of Anna in the Corner is one of the
oldest Orthodox churches in Moscow, located in Zaryadye, at the
intersection of Kitaygorodsky Passage and Moskvoretskaya Embankment.
He belongs to the Iversky deanery of the Moscow Diocese of the
Russian Orthodox Church. The main altar was consecrated in honor of the
conception of the righteous Anna of the Most Holy Theotokos.
The
time of construction of the existing temple is unknown, the researchers
indicate dates from 1480 to 1668. It owes its current appearance to the
restoration carried out in the 1950s by architect Lev David.
For the first time, the church of the Conception, which is on the
Eastern Corner, is mentioned in the chronicle in connection with the
fire of 1493, when the temple burned down along with most of the city.
However, it is not clear which temple is mentioned — stone or wooden. If
we accept Sergei Zagraevsky's version that the Khreshchatyk vault is the
discovery of Moscow masters and the first monument of its kind is the
church of St. Tryphon in Naprudny, then the Church of the Conception of
Anna is a unique masterpiece standing in this row and it is necessary to
date the existing temple to the 1480s. In the fire of 1547, the temple
was damaged, then it was restored. According to Andrey Batalov, the
earliest possible start of construction of a stone church is after this
fire. For the first time as a stone building, the temple is listed in
the Census Book of 1626. In the chronicles, the temple was called:
"what's at the East End" (1493), "what's behind the Salt Row" (1622),
"what's at the city wall in the corner" (1657), "what's in Kitay-gorod
on the Shore" (1677) and, finally, "what's in China in the Corner"
indicating the proximity of the fortress walls and the corner tower of
Kitay-gorod (not preserved).
The southern aisle of the temple is
in honor of the Great Martyr Mina Kotuansky (built in the first quarter
of the XVII century, possibly by order of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky in
honor of the liberation of the capital from Polish and Lithuanian
invaders). The chapel was named after the Great Martyr, on whose
memorial day, November 11, in 1480, the troops of the Great Horde left
the Ugra River.
The north aisle of the church is in honor of the
Great Martyr Catherine (built in 1658-1668). There is an assumption that
he appeared in connection with the birth of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's
daughter named Ekaterina. In 1658-1668, a gallery-porch (gulbishche) was
built around the temple.
The renovation of the temple took place
in 1752 (at the expense of the merchant Zamyatina) and in the XIX
century. By the middle of the XIX century, chapels of the Nine Martyrs
of Cyzicus, Martyrs Victor and Vikenty appeared in the church.
A
handwritten collection was kept in the church (it has not reached the
present time), which contained a story that Ivan the Terrible sent a
miraculous image of the Mother of God to the temple after the fire of
1547.
In St. Basil's Cathedral there is a bell weighing 30
pounds, removed from the bell tower of the XIX century at the Church of
the Conception of Anna, dismantled during the restoration of 1954-1957.
The bell was cast in France in 1547 and acquired by the merchant "Ivan
Grigoriev son Tverdikov" "according to his parents." During the Time of
Troubles, the bell was removed from the church; later it was bought and
returned to the temple by Prince Dimitri Pozharsky.
In the 1920s
(according to other sources, in 1929), the temple was closed and
desecrated, but remained under state protection as a historical
monument. Then the office and tourist facilities were located in the
building. The decoration of the interior of the temple was irretrievably
lost.
In 1947-1948, the building was surveyed by architect
Alexander Fufaev, who combined the results of his research into a
graphic reconstruction. Some of the provisions of Fufayev's
reconstruction were found to be erroneous during the restoration that
followed in 1954-1957.
In 1994, the church was returned to the
Russian Orthodox Church and consecrated in the same year.
Due to
the demolition of the Rossiya Hotel, and then the construction of the
Zaryadye Park, divine services in the temple were temporarily not held.
After the opening of the Zaryadye, services were not resumed for some
time and the temple was closed. On 02/8/2024, the temple is open and
services are held.
The Church of the Conception of Anna is a pillar—less church with a
baptismal vault. The main volume, almost square in plan, is mounted on
the basement. To the east there is a semicircular altar apse, covered
with a semicircular vault. A smooth plinth made of white stone occupies
the entire aboveground part of the basement and is surrounded by a
horizontal thrust. The facades (with the exception of the apse), which
is typical for buildings of that era, are divided into three parts by
blades and topped with trifolia separated by a horizontal belt. The
walls are made of limestone of the Myachkovsky type (basement, temple to
the waist; inside, the limestone walls are brought out to the feet of
the vault) and small-sized bricks (temple belt, walls above the waist,
cornice of the apse, trifolia) on lime mortar. The thickness of the
walls is 108-127 cm at the temple and 105 cm at the altar apse.
The ribbon foundation of the main volume and the apse are made of rubble
stone on lime mortar. It was laid to a depth of 2.6 m from the ancient
day surface.
The massive drum crowning the main volume originally
had no windows and was decorated from the outside with niches that frame
narrow pilasters with decorative false arches, giving the structure
harmony. Four windows in the drum, oriented to the cardinal directions,
were broken later. With equal probability, the drum could be either open
inside the room or separated from it, possibly by a wooden structure.
Its base is decorated with ten (instead of the usual eight) kokoshniks.
The upper part of the cornice of the drum was lost during the
construction of the onion dome in the XVII century.
Initially,
the temple was covered with black-flattened tiles with pointed ends. The
remains of the original covering were discovered over the southwestern
corner of the temple during the restoration. The last covering of the
church (at the time of restoration in the mid-1950s) was a four—pitched
roof.
The chapel of the Mine, erected at the beginning of the
XVII century, also has a groined vault and a narrow blind drum with
false windows.
As Lev David notes, the location of the church was
extremely advantageous: the building towered over Velikaya Street, and
from under the arch of the Kosmodemyansky Gate, at the entrance to
Kitay-Gorod, the view of the temple opened against the panorama of the
Moscow Kremlin.
In 1954-1957, the temple was studied and restored (full-scale studies
and the restoration project of Lev David together with Boris Altshuller
and Sergei Podyapolsky). The purpose of the restoration work was to
remove the later layers of the monument (starting from the XVIII
century) and restore the forms of architecture of the XVI century. The
chapels of St. Mina, St. Catherine and Gulbishche, which appeared in the
XVII century, were recognized as having "historical and
historical-architectural significance", their creators, according to
restorers, achieved "a certain compositional balance and harmony" with
the main ancient core of the temple. These later buildings have been
preserved.
David noted the discovery and restoration of the
original portals, which were considered lost, as a great success of the
restoration work. Three promising portals with keeled ends were returned
to the Temple — the type that is "classic for early Moscow
architecture." At the same time, no traces of gullies or stairs were
found that should lead to these portals.
When examining the
ancient covering of the church above its southwestern corner, the base
of the southern pillar of the old belfry, located diagonally, was
discovered. The question of her composition remains open.
During
the restoration, the bell tower, built in the middle of the XIX century,
was demolished.