The light turquoise church, located in Sergiev Posad, south of the Trinity-Sergievskaya Lavra, today is its Voznesensky courtyard and a cultural heritage site of federal significance. A brick church with a refectory and a bell tower in the style of the late provincial baroque was built here in the second half of the 18th century. Its sharp geometric shapes are smoothed out by the curved outlines of the roofs and the altar apse.
History of the Church of the Ascension of the Lord
At the place where the Church of the Ascension of the Lord was erected, there have long been two settlements - Ikonnaya (it was also called Volkushinskaya) and Rybnaya. They occupied the southeastern part of the future city. The first wooden church was built here in 1653 as a parish center for both settlements. It was consecrated in honor of the Three Saints.
The church had its own cemetery. And by the beginning of the XIII century, nearby, on one churchyard, a second wooden temple was built, consecrated in honor of the Ascension of the Lord. By the 60s of the 18th century, it had become the center of the Voznesensky parish, which was united from the inhabitants of two settlements. The older Trehsvyatskiy temple at that time played a subordinate role of the cemetery church. Like any wooden structure, both churches were dilapidated. And in 1766 it was decided to replace two old churches with one stone one. The new building was built of bricks at the expense of the parishioners in 1779. It consisted of a cold temple, a warm refectory and a bell tower. In memory of the first wooden church in the refectory of the new church, the Trekhsvyatsky side-chapel was made on the south side. And on August 20, the temple was consecrated by Metropolitan Platon.
There were no wall paintings in the new church. It was painted only in different colors. However, the interior of the temple looked majestic due to the richly decorated ornate iconostases. The large church wooden iconostasis had five tiers. Its intricate shapes were hand-carved and meticulously gilded. The smaller iconostases, located in the side-altars of the spacious refectory, were three-tiered. The carpenters who made them painted the iconostases white and gilded in places. All the images displayed here had rises made of silver or copper.
At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, a large Voznesenskaya Square was built next to the church, which became the city's administrative center of Sergiev Posad. It housed the city hall (later - the board) and the public school, later transformed into a men's gymnasium. This immediately changed the status of the parish church. Here they began to swear in all the townspeople elected to fulfill their official duties in the administration of the city.
In the middle of the 19th century, in front of the temple on the west side, a stone one-story wing was built in the style of late classicism. There, with money allocated by the church elder, merchant Alexei Yegorovich Erofeev, a women's almshouse for 12 people was arranged. According to the inventory of the end of 1900, there were 230 households in the Ascension parish. The church bell tower had 11 bells, the largest of which weighed more than 4.2 tons. On the walls and pillars of the temple there were many icons in rich frames. The church was illuminated by a huge copper gilded three-tiered chandelier weighing about 100 kg. At the beginning of the 20th century, a one-story stone gatehouse was built next to the almshouse building. In addition, the Ascension Church owned a land plot of 0.9 hectares. This was the territory where the church building itself and the houses in which the priests lived were located.
The Church of the All-Merciful Savior was also attributed to the Ascension Church, built in the middle of the 19th century on the cemetery that belonged to the Ascension parish. Here, on the eastern outskirts of Sergiev Posad, soldiers who died from wounds in the city's hospitals were buried and buried. The cemetery Church of the Savior was closed in 1934, and its building began to be used as grain warehouses. And in the 1950s, both the church itself and the cemetery in the area of Zheleznodorozhnaya Street were destroyed. The Ascension Church was closed in 1940, and returned to the faithful only 50 years later.
Architecture and interior decoration of the Church of the Ascension of the Lord
The composition of the Ascension Church is traditional, three-part. All its components - the temple, the refectory and the bell tower - are stretched in one line from east to west. When making adjustments to the original design, the building is often altered in such a way that it does not greatly improve its appearance. So it happened with the Church of the Ascension of the Lord. It was thought to be two-story. But for some reason, most likely due to a lack of money, they were forced to abandon the initial project, and the temple was not completed. The results of this rework are still visible. The church turned out to be squat and a little heavy.
The main volume of the temple is made up of a low two-height quadrangle. It is covered with a deaf eight-part dome, at the top of which there is a thin faceted decorative drum topped with a small cupola. The altar apse adjoining the church has a complicated faceted shape.
The two-pillar refectory in one tier is covered with a gable roof. Two side-chapels are consecrated in it - Trekhsvyatsky and Sorrows, named after the image of the Mother of God "Joy of all who sorrow."
The high bell tower in the form of a large pillar is divided into three tiers. It looks very elegant, because textured rustic texture is used to decorate its lower part, and the arches on the upper tiers are decorated with additional small round windows and cross-shaped windows.
The decoration of the Church of the Ascension of the Lord is made in the best traditions of the mature baroque. The windows of the temple are framed in elegant stucco flat trims. The walls are finished with thin ribbons of profiled cornices. And the corners of the building are paired with pilasters. The modern interiors of the temple have been changed and decorated in new ways. And restoration work in the Ascension Church is still ongoing.
The current state of the temple and the visiting regime
Today the Ascension Church is a functioning Orthodox church. Morning services start here every day at 8.00, evening - at 17.00. On Sundays, the Divine Liturgy begins at 9.00. At the church there is a training center "Peresvet" for children from 6 to 17 years old and a Sunday school.
How to get to the Church of the Ascension of the Lord
The temple is located in the city of Sergiev Posad on the Red Army Avenue, 88A, between Sports lane and 1st Rybnaya Street. From the railway station and the bus station located near it, you first need to go down to the Red Army Street, and along it walk to the Ascension Church. This path is short and is less than 0.5 km.
If from Moscow to get to Sergiev Posad by car, then you need to go through the city along the Moscow highway and Red Army Avenue. The Church of the Ascension is located in the center of the city, on the right along the way, about 1 km before the Lavra.
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