Description of the attraction
The Church of the Twelve Apostles is a temple in Veliky Novgorod, which is located on tithes street, in the area of the historical Zagorodsky end. There is chronicle information that in 1230, in the place where the modern church is now, there used to be a wooden one, and it was called “the abyss” or “the church at the skudelnya”. This place received wide publicity due to the fact that in 1230 there was a terrible famine, and it was so strong that city residents literally died in families, and there was absolutely no one to bury the dead. At this time, by order of Spiridon, the Novgorod archbishop, a skudelnitsa or collective grave was installed near the church. There was a special person near her, whose name was Stanila. It was he who was supposed to deal with the business of removing the dead. The temple got its name "on the Abyss" due to the ancient cemetery located just to the south, dating back to the 13th century.
The wooden church was repeatedly burnt and rebuilt. In 1358, the first and third Novgorod chronicles mention a stone church built on the same place by masters Daniil Kozin and Andrei Zakharyin. That temple was much larger than the modern one. Most of the chronicle information about it is rather contradictory, but, apparently, it was destroyed before 1405. In 1432, by order of the Novgorod Archbishop Euthymius, a wooden church was erected. A little later, in 1454, a stone church was laid and within a year was built, which has survived to this day.
At the turn of the 16th century, a ceiling was made in the Temple of the Twelve Apostles, which divided the building into two floors. The lower part of the church was a sub-church, and the upper part was the church itself. It was at this time that the bell tower was completely dismantled, as well as the western vestibule; the roof was also rebuilt into a four-slope one. After a devastating fire in 1904, the roof was already eight-pitched.
In the 19th century, Archimandrite Macarius noted in his chronicles that the place where the church stands was previously called the Metropolitan or Vladychny Island. Then the church was located in the garden and, together with the courtyard and the garden, belonged to the Bishops' House of Novgorod, in which church hierarchs who came from Moscow often stayed.
It is known that the Church of the Twelve Apostles was especially badly damaged during the Great Patriotic War. The complete restoration and restoration of the church took place in 1949. In the period 1957-1958, the next restoration followed, during which a significant strengthening was made, as well as a study of the monument.
The church is a one-apse, cross-domed, one-domed temple with an eight-slope roof. The foundation of the temple is based on a clay continent. A characteristic feature of the church is a two-tier vestibule, the second tier of which served as a belfry.
In 2008, the dome cladding and roof were replaced and painted on the church of the Twelve Apostles, a blind area made of cobblestones was made around the perimeter, and the facade of the building was restored and whitewashed. The temple has many similarities with the Church of Simeon the God-Receiver, located in the Zverin-Pokrovsky Monastery. Both buildings were built 13 years apart, but both are typical examples of the architectural architecture of the city of Novgorod at that time.
The currently existing church of the Twelve Apostles is a miniature structure, especially graceful in its proportions. Focusing on the generally accepted norms for the construction of Novgorod churches of the 14th - early 15th centuries, the architect was able to reduce to a minimum all the decorative elements that adorn the facade of the church.
