What to See in Yaroslavl - Top Sights and Attractions

The Church of the Ascension of Christ is a four-piered penticupolar Orthodox church erected in Kondakovo, a western suburb of Yaroslavl between 1677 and 1682.

The first church on the site was commissioned in 1584 by Basil Kondaki, a wealthy Greek merchant, in order to prevent the planned construction of a Lutheran church in Kondakovo. A smaller parish church is dedicated to the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. This late Baroque building incorporates the 17th-century refectory, a survival from an earlier church. A belfry dating from 1745 was demolished in the 20th century.

The parish churches sustained damage in the Yaroslavl Revolt of 1918 and were later adapted for use by a nearby car barn. The larger church, with all the domes taken down, was used as a depot. Aleksey Soplyakov's frescoes from 1736 have all but disappeared. It was not until the late 2000s that the buildings were returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and restoration work began.^[1]

Iconic church depicted on currency. St. John the Baptist Church in Yaroslavl is considered to be the acme of the Yaroslavl school of architecture. It was built during 1671–1687 on the bank of Kotorosl river in the Tolchkovo sloboda which at that time was the largest and wealthiest part of the town.

Its walls and dome drums are covered with richly glazed tiles; the temple's fifteen onion domes are assembled in three groups. The 7-storey, 45-metre high bell-tower was built later than the church itself in mid-1690s.

The entire interior is covered with frescoes depicting Christian saints, St. John the Baptist hagiography and biblical topics. They were painted by Dmitry Plekhanov and Fyodor Ignatyev in 1694–1695. In 1911, patrimonial defensor Nicholas Roerich wrote Silent Pogrom about the unskillful restoration of the church after the Russian-Japanese war of 1904–1905.^[2]

Church. The Church of St. Nicetas is a Russian Orthodox church of St. Nicetas the Goth on Victory Street in Yaroslavl. It used to be the parish church of medieval Nikitskaya sloboda.

The wooden church of St. Nicetas is known to have existed in 1511. It was rebuilt in stone in 1647 but remained one of the town's poorest churches through much of its history. Its main treasure was the large 16th-century icon of St. Nicetas, currently on exhibit in a local art gallery. After the Russian Revolution the church was closed and dismantled. Some of the frescoes were taken down to be sold abroad. Its remarkable bell tower, built at some point during Peter the Great's reign, still stands. The Soviets classed it as an object of top military importance because of its considerable height.

The parish of St. Nicetas also had a smaller church for winter services. It was consecrated to the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple in 1670. By the early 20th century, the building had proved too small for crowds of factory workers and was considerably expanded in a rather plain Russian Revival style. The domeless building was lucky to survive the Soviet period and has been renovated since 1997.^[3]