Description of the attraction
Work on the restoration of the Church of St. John the Theologian in Bronnaya Sloboda began in the 50s of the last century, and was completed only by 1998. The consecration of the renovated church took place only in 1999.
The temple is located in the Bogoslovsky lane, which was the central street of the settlement of armourers and armourers. Bronnaya Sloboda appeared in Moscow in the middle of the 16th century. The first temple on its territory was wooden and single-altar. The likely date of its construction is called the second half of the 16th century, but the fact of its existence was noted in historical documents in 1625. In the middle of the same century, parishioners decided to build a brick church in its place and raised funds for this. In the second half of the 17th century, the temple acquired a side-altar in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, in the 40s of the next century the dilapidated bell tower was replaced, and the next renovation of the temple took place another hundred years later - in the 40s of the 19th century. In the second half of the 17th century, the first private Orthodox school and an almshouse in Moscow were opened at the church.
Under Soviet rule, St. John the Theological Church was closed, its values and relics were confiscated. First, the church building was adapted as a warehouse, then - for the maintenance of prisoners. In the 1930s, the administration of the neighboring Moscow chamber theater proposed to demolish the building. However, the architect Dmitry Sukhov intervened in the fate of the temple, and the building was only deprived of its heads and a bell tower. The former church was transferred to the drama theater for workshops, and this time the destruction affected the internal structure of the building: in particular, for large-sized decorations it was necessary to break through the wall and make a separate gate.
Despite the fact that the restoration work began back in 1956, they were neither shaky nor shaky and did more harm than good. The building was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1991, and theatrical workshops moved out of it only four years later. In fact, the restoration of the temple took place only in the last years of the last century. The building of the Church of St. John the Theologian in Bronnaya Sloboda has the status of an architectural monument.
