Город Владимир Путешествие по древним городам Владимирской земли Старый Владимир Old Russian Towns Памятники архитектуры Музеи Музеи, экспозиции

Город Суздаль История Суздаля Герб суздаля Архитектура Суздаля Музеи Суздаля

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Following the southern ramparts along the Karnenk to the southeast corner of the kremlin we come to on of the finest specimens of eighteenth-century Suzdal architecture, the Church of St. Nicholas (1720-1739) which replaced a tent-shaped wooden church of the same name burnt down in 1719. The new church was restored in 1960 by Olga Guseva. There must have been a Church of St. Nicholas on this spot right from the early days because the old town gates nearby leading to a bridge over the Kamenka were called the St. Nicholas Gates. St. Nicholas was the patron saint of sailors and travellers which explains why the church here was dedi­cated to him. The Gates led to distant waterways and highways. The Church of St. Nicholas at the Galleys in Vladimir was also situated not far from the jetty.

The present one in Suzdal is a very fine building, com­bining seventeenth-century forms with new features. It is cube-shaped with beautiful portals, elegant window surrounds, and a wide cornice surmounted by a row of •> small kokoshniks. In the centre of the hipped roof there] is a slender, elongated dome drum decorated with two rows of blind arcading. It is possible that the church | originally had five domes. The building is adjoined on its west side by a small narthex-type refectory linking] it with the bell-tower. The latter is beautifully propor-l tioned and decorated. Its design is based on the old type j of tent-shaped wooden church consisting of an octagon ] on a square base. The corners on top of the square base are decorated with tiny tent-shaped pinnacles. The base of the octagon is decorated with kokoshniks, repeating j the motif above the cornice on the main body of the church.  Above  these  is  a  row  of  square  niches  sur-l mounted by another row of Baroque octagonal niches and a broad indented cornice with a band of coloured tiles, which separated the octagon from the bell-tier. The latter is extremely lavishly decorated with rusticated pil­lars surmounted by cornices, moulded arches and, here again, a broad cornice with a row of tiles. The higher I up the more elaborate the decoration becomes. The corners on top of the octagonal bell-tier repeat the motif on the corners of the square base in the form of tiny Gothic-like pinnacles, crowned with crosses, which em­phasise the size and height of the tent-shaped spire. The latter's concave form was an innovation of the Suzdal builders. The traditional tiny slit windows were replaced by round lucarne windows. Only right at the top of the spire were the windows given tiny decorative surrounds enhancing the impression of height. The bell-tower was crowned with a small helmet-shaped dome. The un­known architect of the Church of St. Nicholas was clearly a very gifted master with a keen sense of architectural rhythm and the effective use of decoration. He was ob­viously in touch with the new trends in architecture but felt more affinity with older Suzdalian styles. It is quite likely that he was a native of Suzdal.

The church was an unheated one and formed a pair with the smaller heated Church of the Nativity nearby built in 1775 with a nineteenth-century parvis. We shall see many other examples of paired churches. The small, heated ones are usually very simple and unassuming in design and often resemble a single-storey dwelling or the square-shaped wooden church like the one from Glo-tovo. Basically they are stone replicas of the rectangular log structure that goes to make up a simple peasant izba with the usual saddleback roof. Here we have an excellent example of the way that traditional domestic wooden architecture continued to influence stone churches even as late as the eighteenth century. The combination of these simple heated churches with the main church emphasises the latter's importance and grandeur and frequently groups of this kind form a very picturesque ensemble.

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