Frescoes by Kostroma masters in the center of Yaroslavl

In the very center of Yaroslavl

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Walking around Yaroslavl on a summer day, I found myself in the very center of the city. A large square, surrounded by administrative buildings, opened up in front of me. In the center of the square stood a handsome white-stone temple.

This is the temple of Elijah the Prophet. This is a masterpiece of ancient Russian architecture. The temple was built in 1650 with money from wealthy local merchants.

The appearance of the temple is amazing at first sight. Asymmetry in architecture, complexity and variety of details - at the same time, a very harmonious ratio of volumes. A unique piece of architectural art.

At the first moment, I was simply surprised, admired and went straight to the entrance to the temple.

Today in our country most of the churches are transferred to the church. I don't know if this is good or bad. The fact is that many architectural monuments must be preserved and protected by the state. But if such a monument is handed over to the church, then most often it affects the worse for the monument.

In this sense, I recall an old story that happened in my city. We have the famous Ipatiev Monastery. The monastery had a large museum. The exposition of the museum also included a separate museum of wooden architecture. So, this museum included a magnificent wooden church on stilts. A very beautiful building is the pride of the museum. This church has stood on the territory of the museum for over 30 years. But as soon as the museum and the monastery were transferred to the jurisdiction of the church, this wonderful wooden church burned down.

This is a great tragedy.

There is an even more ancient plot. There is a magnificent stone church from the pre-Mongol period. This is the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl. So, the fact that this temple has survived to this day is a great success.

One of the servants of the monastery, located next to this church, wanted to disassemble it into stones in order to fold the barn. He even managed to get permission from his superiors for this, but did not have time to do this, as he fell ill and died.

In short, it often happens that the interests of the church do not coincide with the interests of preserving monuments of architecture and art. Therefore, approaching the temple in the center of Yaroslavl, I was alarmed.

But when I entered the temple, I saw that it was a museum. There is a ticket office at the entrance and for a small fee you can see the decoration of the temple. The temple is under the joint jurisdiction of the local Diocese and the Yaroslavl Museum-Reserve.

When I bought a ticket and went inside, I immediately saw familiar motives in the decoration of the walls. Something familiar, I thought. And I was right. The fact is that the painting of this cathedral was carried out by my fellow countrymen. These are the famous painters Gury Nikitin and Sila Savin.

Among other things, the uniqueness of these frescoes lies in the fact that they have never been restored. Despite the fact that more than 300 years have passed since the frescoes were painted, the color still looks bright.

Especially blue. This color is one of the first to lose saturation, but not here.

I realized that I needed to return to this temple, having prepared myself by reading something about this temple.

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Working on this article I used sourсes

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The beginning of the story:

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