Description of the attraction
This church on Bolshaya Ordynka is known under two names: Preobrazhenskaya on the main throne in honor of the Savior of the Transfiguration and the Sorrowful one after the name of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow", in honor of which one of the side-chapels is consecrated. The second side-altar was consecrated in honor of the Monk Varlaam of Khutynsky.
The first religious building on this site was a wooden church, known back in the 16th century and standing in Ordyntsy - this is how the road to the Golden Horde was called in Moscow. According to another version, the Horde was the name of the place where people who had been in the Tatar-Mongol captivity and ransomed from it settled.
In the 80s of the 17th century, the church in Ordyntsy was already made of stone and was named in honor of the Savior of the Transfiguration. The church was rebuilt again in the second half of the 18th century at the expense of the merchant Dolgov; his relative Vasily Bazhenov became the architect. In the same century, a side-chapel was built and consecrated in honor of the icon "Joy of All Who Sorrow".
After the fire of 1812, the church had to be restored, and this was done by the architect Osip Bove, who carefully treated the works of his predecessor Bazhenov and tried to preserve everything that could be preserved. The consecration of the renovated church took place in 1836.
In the 30s of the last century, the temple was closed and devoid of bells. But he was more fortunate than some other Moscow churches. During the war, the building was given to the Tretyakov Gallery for spare funds, and therefore the interior of the building, for the most part, was preserved. In 1943, an episcopal council was held in Moscow and a new patriarch was elected, and after the end of the Great Patriotic War, several churches were opened in the Soviet capital, one of which was the Sorrow Church on Bolshaya Ordynka. However, the attitude of the residents of neighboring houses to the church was not the most tolerant - for example, in 1961, at the insistence of the residents of one of them, the bells were removed from the church and placed inside the building.
