Kazan Cathedral (Moscow)

Kazan Cathedral (Moscow)

 

Location: Nikolskaya ulitsa 3
Tel. (495) 698 2726
Subway: Okhotnyy Ryad
Open: 8am- 8pm daily

The Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God on Red Square (Kazansky Cathedral) is an Orthodox church in Moscow, located in front of the Mint on the corner of Red Square and Nikolskaya Street. It was built in the 1630s. It was demolished in 1936 during the Stalinist reconstruction of the Manezhnaya Square area. Restored in 1990-1993 by architects Oleg Zhurin and Gennady Mokeev.

 

History

The wooden Kazan Cathedral was built at the expense of military commander Dmitry Pozharsky in memory of Russia's victory in the Battle of Moscow in 1612. It was erected on the site of the former building of the trading rows, however, there was a market near the fence of the temple for a long time. The Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the main military shrine of the Second People's Militia, was placed in the cathedral. It was delivered by Pozharsky from the Vvedenskaya Church on Lubyanka. The cathedral was consecrated by Patriarch Filaret in October 1625. From the moment of its opening until 1765, religious processions were organized to the cathedral: on the day the icon was found in Kazan - on July 8, and on the day of the capture of Kitai-Gorod - on October 22.

After a fire in 1630, the cathedral was built in stone under the guidance of the architect Abrosim Maksimov. According to another version, masters Semyon Glebov and Naum Petrov supervised the work. The cathedral was a pillarless quadrangle with two aisles. The top of the building was covered by a five-tiered pyramid of kokoshniks. The main throne was consecrated in 1636 in the presence of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and Patriarch Joasaph, and the northern chapel of Averky of Hierapolis was consecrated in the autumn of 1637. The models for the construction were the Small Cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery and the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Rubtsovo. The new temple had one apse, the wall was divided into sections, in which there were windows. Ten years later, to the right of the main church, the chapel of the holy Kazan wonderworkers Gury and Varsonofy was consecrated, dismantled at the end of the 18th century during the expansion of Nikolskaya Street. By 1650, a porch and a hipped bell tower were built in front of the cathedral. The latter was probably attached to the quadrangle from the northwestern side, as was customary in church architecture of the early 17th century. At the end of the same century, a front porch was built, crowned with a cupola, and a fence made of stone pillars with wooden bars was erected.

In the middle of the 17th century, archpriest John Neronov, who did not accept the church reform of Patriarch Nikon, served in the Kazan Cathedral, and after him Avvakum Petrov. In the temple, they were arrested and sent to prison.

 

Usage

In the 1730s, the roofs of the cathedral were horizontally covered with two strips. Later, the temple received a four-pitched roof. At the same time, lucarnes were made on the head of the temple, building on it with a decorative drum with an onion dome. In the late 1760s, the temple complex was rebuilt at the expense of Princess Maria Alexandrovna Dolgorukova, the dilapidated chapel of Saints Guriy and Barsanuphius was dismantled. At the end of the 18th century, the nearby shopping malls were rebuilt, after which they blocked the view of the cathedral from Red Square. The lower tier of the bell tower was lined with benches.

In 1801, by the resolution of Metropolitan Platon, the cathedral lost its hipped bell tower. A new two-tiered quadrangular building was built four years later in the style of classicism. It was installed in the center of the western facade above the entrance to the porch.

In the autumn of 1812, during the Patriotic War, a prayer service was served before the list of the Kazan icon in the Kazan Cathedral for the salvation of the Russian Empire, which was attended by commander Mikhail Kutuzov. Before the occupation of Moscow by the French, the Kazan Icon was hidden in the house of Archpriest Moshkov. During the occupation of the city, the altar of the cathedral was turned into a stable. According to Alexander Shakhovsky, “a dead horse was dragged into the altar of the Kazan Cathedral and put in place of the discarded throne.” By February 1813, the cathedral had been re-consecrated, and by 1816 had been mostly repaired after war damage.

In August 1824, the clergy of the cathedral appealed to Archbishop Filaret with a request to convert the dilapidated Averkievsky chapel into a vestry, since divine services were not held there. However, according to his decree, repairs were made in the extension and prayers were resumed.

In 1849 a new silver temple iconostasis was created. In 1865, a third tier was built on the bell tower, at the same time the facades of the cathedral were redone according to the project of the architect Nikolai Kozlovsky, and in 1873 the walls were repainted. Rector A.F. Nekrasov noted that after the renovation, the temple lost its uniqueness:
Visitors express sorrow for the external squalor of the house of Our Lady. Vladyka Metropolitan Leonty, on his first visit to the Kazan Cathedral, with his characteristic simplicity and directness, said to me: “Well, what kind of cathedral is this? This is a simple country church!” And fair.

Under the new government, on July 8 (21), 1918, Patriarch Tikhon delivered a sermon on the execution of Nicholas II during a divine service. In September of the same year, its main shrine was stolen from the cathedral - a list from the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, revered as miraculous.

 

Dismantling

In 1925, at the expense of the Renovation parish, the restoration of the cathedral began under the leadership of Peter Baranovsky, during which the building was planned to return to its original appearance. The work was carried out without scaffolding and started from the roof. Baranovsky uncovered the remains of the ancient decor under the layers of plaster and found out that the monument of the 17th century was actually completely preserved under the later layers. In details, the accuracy of the reconstruction carried out is disputed, which is caused by a lack of documentary material: for example, the hipped bell tower demolished in 1802 looks different in all the surviving images. By 1929, the ancient kokoshniks and the alleged wall decor had been recreated.

The restoration had not yet touched the top and the bell tower, when the Moscow City Council decided to demolish the temple. Religious buildings did not correspond to the new purpose of Red Square as a venue for solemn ceremonies of the socialist secular state. The bell tower was demolished in 1929, the cathedral - in 1936, at the height of the Stalinist reconstruction of the Manezhnaya Square area. Baranovsky, who returned from exile before dismantling, managed to make measurements and photographic fixation of the temple. Before the demolition, the cathedral housed a warehouse of marble belonging to Metrostroy, which was used to finish the subway under construction.

A year later, on the site of the temple, a pavilion in honor of the Third International was built according to the project of the architect Boris Iofan. In 1937, the Moscow City Council decided to build summer cafes on the site of the demolished temples. One of them was built on the corner of Red Square with Nikolskaya Street - a high podium was built, which partially included the remains of the basement, which was finished with marble. Two open porticos were erected on it, and a fountain was installed between them according to the project of architects L. I. Savelyev and Oswald Stapran.

 

Construction

In 1990, at the initiative of the Moscow city branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, the reconstruction of the cathedral began. The project was developed by architects Gennady Mokeev and Oleg Igorevich Zhurin, to whom Baranovsky gave measurements and other materials on the Kazan Cathedral. After the issuance of a decree on the restoration of the "monument of military glory", the collection of donations began. For this, a temporary wooden chapel and a box for collecting money were installed opposite the entrance to GUM from Nikolskaya Street. However, most of the funds were provided by the Moscow government. As Zhurin recalls, the construction was hindered by the community of the future temple:
From the first days of work on the project, this Community constantly interfered with its implementation. They sought to delay the construction so that the flow of donations, which they used for their own needs, would not dry up. As a result, they broke the walls of the room where I worked on the project, survived me and the architects who helped me from the workshop, disrupted the start of construction work, wrote endless slander to various authorities, being complete ignoramuses in the field of construction and restoration work, put forward the most ridiculous demands

In 1991, a cross was solemnly consecrated on the foundations of the main altar and a foundation plate was installed. The temple was recreated in three years, having been consecrated in November 1993. It was restored in the forms of the middle of the 17th century: with two aisles, a gallery, a tent and an open wide porch. There are no photographs of pre-revolutionary murals, but the historian Sergei Alekseevich Smirnov managed to establish the themes of the murals. Based on his research, artists from Palekh and Bryansk in the 1990s painted the temple in a retrospective, canonical manner. The renewed cathedral was consecrated by Patriarch Alexy II on November 4 - the day of the celebration of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God and in memory of the deliverance of Moscow and Russia from the Poles in 1612. It became the first of the churches in Moscow lost during the Soviet era, which was recreated in its original forms.

 

Architecture

The Kazan Cathedral is a typical for the first half of the 17th century, a type of a square, pillarless, single-domed temple with a hill of kokoshniks, which goes back to the old cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery. Among the buildings of the Moscow Posad, this type included the Church of St. Nicholas the Apparition on the Arbat. The cathedral is surrounded on three sides by open galleries that lead to the hipped bell tower at the northwestern corner and to the northeastern chapel of Averky of Hierapolis
Rows of energetically profiled keeled kokoshniks, deep panels on the shoulder blades of the quadrangle, and triangular architraves, for all their simplicity, create an exceptional plastic effect. The well-founded proportions of the head drum, the skilful arrangement of the kokoshniks “in a dash” contribute to the composure and integrity of the multi-volume architectural composition.

According to Pavel Rappoport, in the arrangement and combination of large kokoshniks with small ones, the desire of Russian architects to enrich the bright, major composition with more fractional details was manifested - a harbinger of the onset of the era of “patterned.