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

Досуг и развлечения Где поесть во Владимире Где поспать во Владимире Что можно посмотреть во Владимире Где поесть в Суздале Где поспать в Суздале Что можно посмотреть в Суздале

Proceeding to the western end of Podbelsky Street we see remains of the 1108 earth ramparts on the right (the left side of Komsomolskaya Street). The Copper Gates built in 1158-1164 leading from the New Town down to the River Lybed used to stand either at the top or bottom of the steep slope.

We are now entering the northwest part of old Vladi­mir. A large market stood on the site of the present square from the sixteenth century until quite recently, which was responsible for bringing a great deal of dirt and rubbish into the centre of the town. Skirting the square we turn right towards the old Convent of the Assumption.

The Convent was founded in the northwest corner of the New Town at the end of the twelfth century by the wife of Vsevolod III, Princess Maria Shvarnovna, and came to be known as the Princess Convent. Like the cita­del and the Monastery of the Nativity this convent formed, as it were, a small town within a town, a small stronghold within a larger one.

The Cathedral of the Assumption was erected in the centre of the convent in 1200-1201. We know little of its subsequent history, but the present building dates back to the end of the fifteenth century. It is a large brick building with four pillars, one dome, broad divisions of the outer walls, three powerful apses and two chapels. The original roofing of the cathedral (restored in 1960 by Igor Stoletov) is of particular interest. Over the zakomaras rises a rectangular base decorated with pointed kokoshniks. The base of the drum is also deco­rated with a wreath of smaller kokoshniks. This tiered composition was typical of fifteenth and sixteenth cen­tury Russian architecture. The lower part of the building was possibly surrounded by galleries. The cathedral's corner chapels were rebuilt later, probably in the six­teenth or seventeenth centuries. The windows in the apses were enlarged in the eighteenth century, and in 1823 the building was encircled by a new parvis which embraced the lower section of the seventeenth-century bell-tower on the southwest corner of the cathedral.

Excavations have shown that the building was erected almost exactly on the foundations of the cathedral of 1200-1201 with the same ground plan, which is similar to that of the Cathedral of St. Dmitri. Instead of white stone, the walls of the old cathedral were built of fine brick blocks laid on a strong solution of lime mixed with fragments of brick. Brick began to be used again in Vladimir at the end of the twelfth century. Excavations have revealed blocks of brickwork from the upper sections of the building and, significantly, curved bricks from the deeply recessed portals and complex, clustered pilasters on the outer walls. Pilasters of this type at the end of the twelfth century are usually associated with the tall cruciform churches crowned by a single dome on a tiered base, which began to appear in Russian architecture about this time. This style soon became predominant and was linked with the growth of urban culture, and a reassessment and transformation of indigenous styles of church architecture. There are ample grounds for assuming that the Princess Cathedral was a building of the type just described. It is also possible that the tiered roof of the present building reproduces to a certain extent the complex form of the roof on the old building of 1200-1201. The latter appears to have had no sculp­tural decoration whatsoever. It was a severe convent cathedral, like the episcopal Cathedral of the Assump­tion and the cathedral in the Monastery of the Nativity. The chronicles tell us that in the thirteenth century the cathedral became the burial place of its founder. Princess Maria, her sister Anne, Vsevolod Ill's second wife, and the wife and daughter of Alexander Nevsky. It is interesting that the niches containing their tombs, now blocked up, are to be found in the outer eastern section of the two side walls of the present building. This suggests that the old cathedral was adjoined by additional structures, and excavations have, in fact, proved that the building was originally encircled on three sides by a narrow gallery with a floor of coloured majolica tiles, like the floor of the main body of the cathedral. It is possible that the eastern ends of the gallery contained two chapels - the Chapel of the Annunciation on the south side and the Chapel of the

Nativity or Our Lord on the north side. The princesses' tombs occupied pride of place in these chapels. The low galleries would have given the building a graduated out­line leading to the stepped tiers of the roof.

The Princess Convent is linked with an intriguing story about the "sacred relics" of a certain merchant by the name of Avraami who went to spy out the land of the Volga Bulgars for the prince of Vladimir and was caught and put to death in 1229. This event caused a great political uproar, and in 1230 the remains of this wily merchant were brought to Vladimir and interred in the cathedral with great ceremony as the "sacred relics" of the new "martyr". They played an important political role in the fierce struggle of the time between Vladimir and its eastern neighbours.

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