Menshikov Tower

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The Menshikov Tower
The Church 1882

The Menshikov Tower ( Russian Меншикова башня ), also known as Church of the Archangel Gabriel ( Russian Церковь Архангела Гавриила ), is a Russian Orthodox Baroque church in the center of Moscow in the Basmanny district within the boulevard ring . It was the first building in Moscow to reach the height of the Ivan the Great bell tower at 81 meters and is now the oldest of the Peter Baroque structures still standing in Moscow.

The church was built in 1707 by the architect Iwan Sarudny on behalf of Alexander Menshikov in collaboration with Domenico Trezzini , Italian and Swiss masters from the cantons of Friborg and Ticino and Russian stonemasons from Kostroma and Yaroslavl . It replaced an older church of Archangel Gabriel, which is first mentioned in 1551 at this point.

In 1723 the church tower burned down after a lightning strike. The falling church bells smashed through the wooden roof and destroyed parts of the interior of the nave. The side altars, however, remained undamaged, services continued to take place on them, while the main tower remained "decapitated" until 1773. From 1773 to 1779 the tower was rebuilt in its current form. The original octagonal spire was replaced by the new, more compact dome in the Baroque style.

The Menshikov Tower had no heating and was therefore closed in winter. A smaller neoclassical church of St. Theodore was built in 1806 for the winter . It also rings the bells, because the Menshikov Tower itself has had no bells since the fire of 1723.

From 1821 to 1850 the Menshikov Tower served as the house church of the Central Post Office. The structure was renovated and the main tower received its pineapple-shaped tip, which has been preserved to this day. In addition, the central post office planned to reinstall the bells, but the project was not implemented.

In 1922 the church was looted, closed for services and lost, among other things, its iconostasis . Today's iconostasis comes from a church in the Preobrazhenskoye district that was destroyed around 1960. At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet government created favorable conditions for the Russian Orthodox Church again; among other things, it was decided to restore a metochi from the Patriarchate of Antioch in Moscow. The church was consecrated on July 17, 1948.

See also

literature

  • Pamyatniki arhitektury Moskvy. Bely Gorod. (Памятники архитектуры Москвы. Белый город.), Pp. 245-251. Iskusstvo Publishing House, Moscow 1989.

Web links

Commons : Menshikov Tower  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 55 ° 45 ′ 47 "  N , 37 ° 38 ′ 20"  E