Description of the attraction
The Church of the Image of the Lord Jesus Christ Not Made by Hands is a Pskov Orthodox church. It is also called the Obrazskaya Church with Toad Lavitsa (this was the name of the small swamp, near which the church was erected).
The temple was first mentioned in chronicles in 1487, when there was a terrible plague in Pskov. In September 1540 in the city, on Zapskovye, there was a strong fire, but the wooden church was not damaged. There is no data on when the wooden church was replaced by the existing one. In the documents for 1745, 25 parish courtyards were assigned to the Church of the Not-Made-by-Hands from Zapskovye near the Ilyinsky Gate. In 1852, the temple was intended to be demolished and dismantled almost half, but in 1854, and in other sources - in 1857 - the church was restored. Most likely, at this time, a flat wooden ceiling and a deaf drum were made. In November 1931, the church was closed and the building was occupied by workshop schools.
In 1960, under the leadership of B. S. Skobeltsyn, architectural and archaeological studies of the building were carried out here, partial reconstruction and reconstruction of the interior of the quadruple was carried out. The building of the temple was adapted for a retail outlet and a warehouse. In the same year, in August, the Temple of the Image of the Lord Jesus Christ Not Made by Hands was declared a monument of republican significance and taken under state protection.
The church is 30 meters long and 20 meters wide. Built from the local limestone slab with lime mortar. The quadruple is pillarless, one-apse, with a flat wooden floor that supports the decorating muffled drum, ending with a bulbous head. The apse is altar, semi-cylindrical. On the west side, a vestibule and a porch with large openings, laid from the north and south, are attached to the quadrangle. On the south side, the temple is adjoined by a side-altar with a rectangular apse. Above it is a tent and a bulbous cupola on a decorative drum. From the west, the side-altar wall ends with a belfry. It has 3 pillars and 2 spans and is covered with a gable roof. The belfry is asymmetrical, shifted to the southwestern part of the wall.
The decoration of the facades of the temple is modest. On the northern and southern facades of the quadrangle, there are partially preserved blades. On the south side, you can see a small niche with a keeled arch. The northern and southern walls of the quadrangle have large window openings decorated with arched onion lintels. In the southwest corner of the quadrangle is a doorway leading to the south aisle. There is a small doorway in the north wall. There are two windows in the apse.
The box vault, which has stripping over the windows, overlaps the south aisle and the light above it. The eastern part of the chapel contains the remains of a ceramic floor that dates back to the 17th century. The floor of the temple is unparalleled among local churches and civic buildings. The floor pattern consists of squares, parallelograms, rhombuses and narrow rectangles that form stripes that delimit the central path that runs along the aisle. The tiles are made in reddish-brownish, dark brown and light yellow colors.
In its original form, the adjacent southern façade and the firelight have been preserved. The southern facade has 2 windows with bulbous arched lintels. The light house also has 2 small slit windows, between which there is a niche with a keeled arch. A gable roof covers the light. On the roof there is a decorative drum, a head and a metal cross.
The central part of the vestibule is overlapped by a corrugated vault resting on 2 lateral corrugated vaults, which are located perpendicular to the central one. The porch has a gable roof. In its northern wall there are 2 deep burial niches.
The Church of the Image of the Lord Jesus Christ Not Made by Hands is a cultural and historical monument of federal significance.
