Description of the attraction
The Church of John the Baptist is located in the city of Kargopol, Arkhangelsk region. This is a five-domed white-stone Orthodox church. John's Church was built in 1740-1752 on the site of a wooden parish church on Cathedral Square on the left side of the Nativity of Christ Cathedral. If the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ opened a kind of page of Kargopol white-stone architecture - the formation of a local type of cubic five-domed church, then the Church of John the Baptist is one of the completions of this type. The height of the building is 35 meters, it is the largest and tallest in the city. The form is austere, the domes are made in the Baroque style.
The church is striking in its size, in keeping with other stone masses; together with them, she plays a significant role in creating the urban silhouette. Flat pilasters sparsely divide the white, unadorned smooth surface of the cube walls. The temple has three tiers of windows. The lower windows have rounded semicircular arches, while the upper ones are made in the form of a shaped octahedral shape. The striking contour of the stone cube is unexpectedly and expressively complemented by the bizarre shape of baroque domes on elongated drums. On the hipped roof, there are massive, widely spaced stone drums with a baroque five-domed: above the low lower domes, there is a small dome, which gives the impression of elegance, as in wooden architecture, of many domes. The Church of John the Baptist is the only temple with double domes. It is no coincidence that the image of this church attracts many artists by the contrast of its mean forms with ornate decoration.
Of particular interest is a large church wall with an altar, which has far-out apses with keeled roofs - a resemblance to the barrels of wooden temples, which has found application in stone architecture. By the way, three barrels with the domes of the Church of St. John the Baptist are also made of wood. Of course, such a covering could have formed only in the North. On the west side, the church is adjoined by a squat porch with a gable roof, on the north - a covered porch.
Despite the fact that the building of the temple is in good condition, it is completely devoid of interior decoration. The iconostasis is indicated by only a few paper icons on plywood boards, and the vast area of the church is completely devoid of icons.
During the Soviet years, the church was closed. Since 1994, the temple has been part of the Kargopol Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve. In 1996 it was transferred to the Arkhangelsk and Kholmogorsk dioceses. Now the Church of St. John the Baptist is active, services are being held. The parish has created and takes care of prayer rooms in the Nyandoma special boarding school for juvenile delinquents and in the Kargopol nursing home. A Sunday school for children has been set up at the church.
