Description of the attraction
According to an ancient legend, in 1170, when numerous troops of the Suzdalites attacked the city of Novgorod, thanks to the icon "The Sign of the Most Holy Theotokos", the Novgorodians won. According to legend, during the siege of Novgorod, Archbishop Elijah prayed for several days for the salvation of the city. Then he took an icon from the Church of the Savior, and put it on the fortress wall, facing the attackers. One arrow of the attackers hit the holy face. Then the icon itself turned away its face and exuded a tear. At this moment, the Suzdal people lost their sight, and the enemy was defeated. This is true, or fiction, but the trace of that arrow has been preserved on the icon to this day. The victory was a real miracle, since the forces were unequal. In honor of the miraculous icon, the Novgorodians built the Church of the Sign. In 1688 the church fell into decay, and the Cathedral of the Sign was built in its place.
The structure is typical for 17th century temples, although its architectural forms are more similar to those of Yaroslavl than to traditional Moscow ones. The cathedral is located in close proximity to the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, and its distinctive architecture is even more noticeable from this neighborhood.
The temple has four pillars, traditional for Russian temple building of the 17th century, five-domed. It consists of a basement, a two-storey bypass gallery and three apses. The facades are separated by shoulder blades and topped with false zakomars, richly decorated with paintings. A frieze is placed along the perimeter of the zakomar, with a pattern specific to Moscow and Kostroma buildings. In the spirit of the Yaroslavl tradition, the temple is covered with external and internal murals. The painting is present even on the arches of the porch, on the holy gates, in the semicircles of the cornice. The painting was done by the icon painter I. Bakhmatov. He was assisted by 30 artists from Kostroma. Unlike the traditional Novgorod school, the painting of the Cathedral turned out to be fussy-realistic, even rude. Many images are full of patterns and bright colors. Each drawing is made, as it were, separately from the others and differs from other images. Despite this, when looking at the temple as a whole, there is a majestic harmony.
The interior painting is the same original, with a pronounced secular character. On the square of the entire western wall of the temple there is an image of the "Last Judgment". One of the mural figures is very similar to Peter I. In addition to the murals, the Cathedral also had a significant collection of ancient icons. Unfortunately, only a few of them have survived. This is the well-known icon "The Sign of the Mother of God" and "Savior Emmanuel", depicting Christ in adolescence, next to the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Two icons still survived, which come from the iconostasis of the Cathedral. Today all these icons are kept in the Novgorod museums.
Over the centuries, fires have occurred in the temple several times. He suffered especially badly during the Second World War. The Nazis set up a barracks in the temple, they broke the floors. The frescoes were heavily smoked from the smoke of the fires, the walls were riddled with shells. Each time the building was repaired. There were wealthy benefactors who allocated money for the reconstruction and restoration of the Cathedral. In the 1950s, the Novgorod restoration workshop was engaged in the restoration of the temple. They made a new roof for the cathedral and restored the destroyed parts. However, as a result of all these repairs, the temple has somewhat lost its original appearance.
In the present, the Znamensky Cathedral is not active, but it is open, and you can visit it as a monument of ancient architecture and amazing monumental painting. However, due to the excellent acoustics in the Cathedral, sacred and classical music is often played in it. Music complements and, as it were, reveals the monumental architectural and artistic ensemble, the extraordinary beauty of the ancient artistic concept.
