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The Cathedral of the Nativity, one of the earliest sur­viving examples of Vladimir-Suzdalian architecture, is more than eight and a half centuries old. When Vladi­mir Monomach built the Suzdal fortress at the end of the eleventh century he also erected the large town Ca­thedral of the Assumption. As the stronghold of the Church in an area which had only recently become Chris­tian it was carefully looked after by the authorities and was frequently decorated and repaired. In spite of this, however, it soon began to collapse. Prince Georgi, the son of Vsevolod III, ordered it to be dismantled and a new cathedral of white stone was erected in its place (1222-1225).

Excavations by the south wall of the present building have revealed some extremely interesting remains of the original cathedral. They show that it was built of thin bricks set in a lime cement mixed with small pieces of brick, which was a technique widely used in Kiev. The cathedral was almost the same size as the present one, i.e., it was a large six-pillared building with a narthex on its west side and three apses. A fragment of its fres­coes has been preserved on the lower part of the wall. Judging by the brickwork the cathedral was the work of

Kiev builders brought here by Vladimir Monomach, They also organised the manufacture of the building materials here. The bricks were baked in specially built kilns along the banks of the Kamenka and the lime was prepared in large circular stoves inside the fortress itself not far from the building site. Traces of these installa­tions have also been discovered during excavations. There are grounds for thinking that the prince's palace lay to the west of the cathedral, but we do not know whether it was built of brick or stone.

This great cathedral with its clear, bright interior glowing with beautiful frescoes undoubtedly made a very powerful impression on the townspeople who lived huddled together in tiny, smoke-filled dug-outs and hovels. It must have overwhelmed them with a sense of the power of their new God and the majestic strength of their rulers who had created a "house of God" of matchless beauty.

There was no attempt to restore the cathedral when it began to collapse at the end of the twelfth century. The walls still stood firm and had to be hacked away at their foundations when it was being dismantled. It is possible that the severe brick cathedral with its bare outer walls divided by flat pilaster strips no longer suited the new architectural tastes of the people in the thirteenth century who were more impressed by the richly decorated Ca­thedral of St. Dmitri in Vladimir and the dazzling beauty of the new white stone churches. The chronicle stresses that in the years 1222 to 1225 Prince Georgi erected a new cathedral "more fair than the first", i.e., the original one. Bishop Simon of Vladimir who helped to compile the Kiev patericon, a collection of stories about the lives of monks at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, played a part in the cathedral's construction.

Unfortunately this cathedral has not survived intact. In 1445 the roof collapsed. In 1528 the walls were dis­mantled down to the decorative band of blind arcading and in 1530 the upper section was rebuilt in brick and topped with the usual five-domed roof. At the end of the seventeenth century the old choir-gallery was destroyed and the narrow, slit windows were widened. In 1750 the cathedral was given huge, onion-shaped domes and the roof, which had formerly followed the shape of the zako-maras, was replaced by a simple hipped one. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adjoining struc­tures were built on to the north and west walls. In 1870 the outer walls were plastered with mortar and painted a muddy red. The later adjoining structures were re­moved in 1954 and the cathedral was carefully restored by Alexei Varganov and Igor Stoletov in 1964. We can reconstruct a picture of the original thirteenth-century cathedral from the remaining lower tier and information from other sources.

If we recall the Cathedral of the Assumption in Vladi­mir in its original form (1158-1160) we can see imme­diately from the exterior of the Suzdal cathedral that we are dealing here with the same type of building. It is a large town cathedral, elongated lengthwise due to the sharply protruding apses which make it look like an eight-pillared building inside. The main entrances are adjoined by narthexes on all three sides giving the ca­thedral a cruciform appearance. The outer walls are divided by pilaster strips and surrounded by a decora­tive band of blind arcading. In many ways, however, the cathedral differs greatly from the specimens of twelfth-century architecture which we have examined.

It is built for the most part of rough slabs of porous tufa forming an uneven surface which was originally covered with nothing but a lime coating. Only a few of the smaller details were made of hewn white stone: the socle, the pilaster strips on the outer walls, the semi-columns on the apses, the band of blind arcading and the carved portals. This was the result more of new tastes than the desire to economise by using a cheaper material. The clearly etched stone carving shows up very strikingly against the rough background of the walls. The architects have, as it were, combined the taste for a refined decorative finish characteristic of Vladimir architecture with the simple somewhat coarse wall texture reminiscent of churches in Novgorod and Pskov.

The division of the outer walls was simplified, elabo­rate pilasters and semi-columns being replaced by nar­row, flat pilaster strips. The latter no longer corre­sponded exactly to the interior pillars with the result thai this basic element for dividing the outer walls no longer reflected the building's structure. Whereas twelfth-cen tury architects regarded the pilaster strip as an essen­tial structural element for strengthening the walls at the points of tension in the vaulting, we now see them as narrow thin strips stuck on to the wall with the sole purpose of dividing it into sections. The pilaster strips themselves are intersected by a band of ornamental carving and reliefs of lions and griffins inserted on their corners, which were even further removed from their original structural function. In this connection, the south portal  is particularly interesting. The clear link between twelfth-century portals and their structural ele­ments is almost totally lacking here. The shape of the archivolt does not correspond to the face of the portal, its outside semi-columns are crowned with carved slabs instead of the usual capital, and the inside column stands somewhat apart from the masonry and is broken up by decorative beading, etc.

All this shows a new attitude on the part of the archi­tects, namely, a desire to reinforce the purely decorative element and eliminate its link with the structure of the building. The same approach can be seen in the treatment of the band of blind arcading which no longer bears any relation to the position of the choir-gallery and therefore, like the pilaster strips, gives no indica­tion of the building's internal structure on the outer walls. It is used simply as a piece of decoration which can be moved up or down at will. The band is deeply recessed producing a vivid interplay of light and shade, but its proportions have changed considerably. Instead of light, slender, tapering columns we see relatively short cylindrical ones that look like carved wooden balusters. The consoles have been turned into a kind of cube-shaped support and all that remains of the elabo­rate bases is a single round block decorated at the cor­ners with horned griffins. The capitals and the round block beneath them have also become very large. All the elements in the band are densely covered with carving; even the row of decorative brickwork is notched with a herring-bone pattern which blurs the sharp contours of the stone and makes it look more like a row of small round wooden balusters.

The carving itself is mainly flat and ornamental, re­miniscent of wood carving like that which we saw in the Cathedral of St. Dmitri. An excellent illustration of this can be found in the lions on the south portal which are carved almost graphically, each line extremely expressive, and also in the wide curve of the archivolt decorated with garlands of twining plants emerging from the tail of a bird. The architects' love of ornament which led them to change the character of certain archi­tectural features justifies the assumption that the upper part of the building was richly decorated with carving just as lavish as that on the Cathedral of St. Dmitri. There are grounds for thinking that above the band of blind arcading the pilaster strips were more complicated in form and decorated with carving. It is highly likely that the system of covering the wall with a flat carpet of ornament on which high relief carved stones and com­positions stand out very clearly, that we shall see later in the Cathedral of St. George at Yuryev-Polskoi, first originated here. There was probably a band of blind arcading along the top of the apses divided by narrow semi-columns.

The outer walls of the narthexes and the cathedral were probably crowned with pointed zakomaras. Above the latter rose three domes: a large one over the point where the transept crosses the nave, and two smaller ones. There are two theories about where the smaller domes stood. They may have been placed on the eastern corners of the cathedral to provide more light for the enlarged sanctuary: this arrangement can be found in Suzdal's sixteenth-century three-domed monastery cathe­drals which imitated the main town cathedral. On the other hand a number of twelfth-century buildings sug­gest that the two domes may have stood on the western corners in order to provide more light for the large choir-gallery. Certain twelfth-century buildings in Po­lotsk, Pskov and Chernigov, together with the fact that the cathedral's roof collapsed in 1445, suggest that the latter had an unusual design and that the central dome rose above the vaulting on an elevated tower-shaped base, similar to that in the cathedral of the Princess Con­vent at Vladimir. It is also likely that the western section of the cathedral with its two domes was slightly lower, giving the building a tiered appearance. If these suppo­sitions are correct the Suzdal cathedral reflects the ten­dency in Russian architecture of the twelfth and thir­teenth centuries to adapt the traditional design of a dome inscribed in a cross in favour of a more dynamic compo­sition. It was evidently a most original and sumptuous building.

One of the important features of the cathedral is the way in which it was adapted to fit in with its surround­ings. It stood on the site of the older building erected by Vladimir Monomach quite near to the northern ramparts of the fortress, with its south and east walls facing the town square.

The architects paid special attention to the main south wall and its narthex. The ornamentation here is richer and finer than on the other walls, and the carved portal was transformed, as it were, into a huge icon frame of white stone inside which the panels of the copper gates shone with embossed gold. The patterned carving of the surround linked the portal w.ith the corner pilaster strips of the narthex. The side walls of the narthex were deco­rated with a striking cornice consisting of two strips of protruding cut stone which produced a rich interplay of light and shade. The ogee-shaped zakomoro. of the nar­thex was decorated with carved figures (the central figure, possibly the Archangel Michael, has been lost and all that remains are the haloes of the figures at the sides) and a wide ornamental band of plants and birds. It was through this lavishly decorated south entrance that the townspeople of Suzdal entered the cathedral. In the east section of the cathedral's south wall there is a very elaborate window decorated with a surround of semi-columns with carved bases and capitals.

The west wall facing the prince's courtyard was the second most important one. The front of the west nar­thex had a broad, impressive carved portal with the soft curves of the archivolt faced with fine stone. It is inter­esting that here too the various elements are re­markably delicate in spite of the large dimensions of the portal: the semi-columns and ledges are thin and elon­gated, and the curve of the archivolt is flattened making it look incapable of bearing the weight of the masonry above it. The portal seems to have had no doors, so the narthex was an open one. Beyond it in the wall of the cathedral itself there was a second portal, possibly painted, also with "golden doors". The narthex originally had an upper storey which was destroyed at the end of the seventeenth century. Inside its north wall there was a staircase leading to the upper part of the building and the choir-gallery. The arched entrance, now blocked up, can still be seen in the cathedral wall under the ceiling of the narthex.

The north wall facing the ramparts was much plainer.

This is particularly evident in the portal made of thin brick, where the moulding consists merely of a number of rectangular strips without bases or capitals. The only bright touch was its frescoes (the present frescoes date back mainly to the seventeenth century). The band of blind arcading on the north wall was the work of less experienced craftsmen and its subject matter was less varied. Thus, as we have shown, the different walls,of the cathedral were decorated in relation to their sur­roundings.

Let us now go inside the cathedral, bearing in mind that its interior also belongs to two different periods. On the north side of the southwest pillar, about ten feet from the ground, there is a moulded cornice reminding us that the old choir-gallery once rested on these pillars, The gallery was unusually large and its vaulting covered the west ends of the two side aisles dividing them, as it were, into two storeys. The upper storey had plenty of light from the windows in the corner domes and walls. Clearly the large choir-gallery was not intended only for the prince's family and retinue. We have already noted that the entrance to it came from inside the cathedral and was in no way connected with the royal residence. Suzdal's cathedral was the first one that^ really belonged to the town, and the boyars, rich merchants and master craftsmen also possessed the right to stand in the choir-gallery, after passing through the sumptuous portals of the west narthex and up the staircase in its wall.

The area below the choir-gallery was in semi-dark­ness, the only sources of light being two small windows in the west wall and the arches of the choir-gallery whicli opened out into the nave. Beneath the gallery there was a burial vault. Niches were built into the base of the walls of the cathedral and its narthexes for the tombs of the royal family and bishops. This probably explains why the east end of the cathedral was extended increas­ing its area. Some of the niches still have traces of paint­ing dating back to 1233. The southern niche of the west wall is particularly striking with a gorgeous crimson flower surrounded by twisting fronds, and yellowish stems with dark-blue and pink flowers framing the arch (111. 64). However the cathedral's builders and their suc­cessors had little opportunity to avail themselves of the burial niches. Thirteen years after the cathedral was completed Suzdal was captured by the Mongols and the burial vault was used mainly for the feudal nobility of later times. The descendants of the Suzdal-Nizhny Nov­gorod princes were buried here in the fifteenth, six­teenth and seventeenth centuries.

The sanctuary was divided from the main body of the church and the congregation by an altar barrier. This was probably made of white stone and it is possible thai the cube-shaped stones with female masks under an ogee arch (111. 63) which were inserted into the outer walls above the band of blind arcading, bear some rela­tion to it. Investigations have shown that these stones were actually capitals with three faces, the two side ones now being hidden by the brickwork. Similar capitals may have crowned the side posts of the altar gates which led to the sanctuary and the side apses. Old miniatures show pictures of pillars like these with triple-headed capitals and the carved posts of wooden doors.

In 1233 the floor of the cathedral was covered with coloured majolica tiles, large areas being paved with square tiles of yellow, green and dark brown. The sec­tion under the main dome and probably by the altar as well was covered with small tiles forming intricate, mosaic-like patterns. The chronicler describes these floors with their shining, glazed surface as "wondrous variegated marble".

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