Description of the attraction
The Kazan Transfiguration Church is Tutaev's trademark. It was erected in 1758 and very well blended into the city's landscape, as if descending from the steep bank of the Volga, creating an unusual ensemble, which is the center of the city's panorama of the left bank.
The temple complex includes two churches, hence the double name of the temple. The lower church is warm - Kazan, it is located in the basement of the building. The second tier above it rises the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord with an open gallery and a refectory.
In the Kazan Church there is an icon of Our Lady of Kazan, especially revered in Romanov. The Transfiguration Church is interesting for its gallery, which can be climbed along the high porch. A picturesque panorama of the city of Tutaev opens from it. The upper summer temple has two entrances. One is located from the east, the other - from the north in the form of a porch with a steep staircase on an arch, also to the gallery of the porch and the second floor.
The winter temple also has two entrances. The main entrance is located on the Volga side, it is framed by a stone porch, above which a metal canopy was installed on cast pillars. Above the visor, the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God was placed in a special niche. The second entrance is to the gallery on the first floor from the refectory.
In the summer church, the windows are arranged in two tiers. On the roof of the church, on low drums, at the corners there are four chapters with a diameter slightly larger than the drums. In the middle drum there are six dormer arched windows. The chapter on this drum is much larger than the rest. All chapters are decorated with eight-pointed gilded crosses.
The placement of the hipped bell tower is rather unusual: it was built separately from the church, at the very top of a hill and, as it were, dominates the entire structure. It can be seen from afar, while it looks like a high peaked tower. The holy fool Onufry is buried under the bell tower. But no records of his life and burial remained. The Romantzians greatly revered this holy fool. A monument was erected over the grave, and the lower room of the belfry was converted into a chapel, where the requiem was performed on the day of memory of Onuphrius.
The legend of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God is associated with the Kazan Church. Gerasim brought this icon to his hometown from Kazan in 1588. During the Polish-Lithuanian intervention, this image was transported to Yaroslavl and assigned to one of its churches. The Romanovites wrote a petition to Vasily Shuisky to order the return of the image of the Mother of God. But the Yaroslavl people did not want to give the valuable icon away, and the patriarch Garmogen left the icon in Yaroslavl, while Romanov was sent an exact copy of it, which was decorated like the original.
In 1931, it was decided to liquidate the temple and place the Tutaevskiy regional executive committee within its walls. In May 1931, the church was given over to training courses. At the same time, the interior decoration of the temple was destroyed by new "residents". Icons, utensils and the iconostasis were burned near the church. At different times, the temple housed: a brewery, a creamery, living quarters, tin and carpentry workshops; TV and radio workshop. For a long time, a rescue station was located on the porch of the warm church.
In the early 1990s, the temple began to be restored, while an old secret burial was discovered behind the altar of the winter temple, which ran along the entire length of the wall and had a height up to the overlap of the 2nd floor, which was arranged during the construction of the church. In this cache lay human skulls and bones (but not a single whole skeleton). Most likely, when the trenches were dug for the foundation of the temple, the graves of the monastery cemetery were violated. The remains were collected and buried behind the altar (in a place of honor) of the warm temple. After the completion of the restoration work, the cache was walled up again.
In 1996, the temple was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church. Priests of the Tutaevsky Deanery District regularly hold divine services, annual processions with a list of the Kazan-Yaroslavl icons.
