Description of the attraction
The famous Cathedral of John the Baptist was built with a slight indent from the banks of the Velikaya River. According to legend, the cathedral belonged to the Ivanovo monastery, which was founded around 1240 by the local princess Efrosinya, she was the daughter of a Polotsk prince named Rogvold Borisovich, and also an aunt of Prince Dovmont. At one time, Efrosinya was rejected by her husband, the adventurer Yaroslav Vladimirovich. After that, her life was tragic, for which reason she decided to have a haircut at a nun. In Pskov, Efrosinya built the Ivanovo monastery, becoming its first abbess.
After a while, Prince Yaroslav invited Efrosinya to a date in the city of Odempe, in which she was killed by the hands of her stepson. The abbess was buried in Pskov, namely in the cathedral of the Ivanovsky monastery, after which it became the burial vault of the Pskov princesses. In this place Princess Natalya, Princess Maria, wife and son of Yaroslav Striga-Obolensky were buried.
The building of the Cathedral of the Nativity of John the Baptist has an elongated shape from west to east. The facades of the church are vertically dismembered and end in the form of rounded zakomars, corresponding to all the internal forms of the church and defining the inherent nature of the coating. The head of the temple, which has a volumetric light drum, is slightly shifted from its central part to the east, and the other two chapters are located closer to the narthex on the west side and perfectly balance the entire upper part of the church. Three chapters are neatly decorated with zakomarny under-cornice belts, protruding strongly beyond the main part of the drums. From the side of the altar, the façade includes three correctly positioned semicircular apses with smooth outer surfaces. The small number of decorations makes the appearance of the cathedral a little meager, but still the general composition of the church building, for example, auxiliary light chapters, rounded elements of the ends, as well as apse ledges define the overall picturesque silhouette of the Ivanovsky Cathedral. A small two-span belfry, located in the southern part of the wall, was erected in the 16th century. In the 17th century, an annex was erected on the west side, which stretches along the entire facade and is the remnant of annexes, which literally overgrown many of the ancient churches of Pskov over time. The Cathedral of John the Baptist has a rather squat appearance and looks as if it has grown into the ground, because it is surrounded by a global cultural layer that has accumulated so densely over the eight centuries of its existence.
Until the 19th century, the Cathedral of the Nativity of John the Baptist was covered with planks, and its heads were simply upholstered with scales and painted. On the right side of the altar column was an iron door leading through a narrow passage to a stone porch, which later collapsed from dilapidation. The iconostasis is made of four belts with pedestals and cornices. The upper belt has a cross, and on it there is an image in different places, which is gilded with red gold.
There is a large stone cellar under the church with an underground passage and vaults. Wooden doors lead into the vestibule, painted and lined with wide iron stripes with padlocks and internal masks. If you enter the cathedral from the west, you can see wooden doors lined with iron stripes, and there is a double door on the south side. In the western part of the cathedral there are choirs made of wood. The cathedral is illuminated by means of five large windows with iron bars and four small windows in the dome.
Not far from the bell tower of the Nativity of John the Baptist, there used to be a warm side-by-side church with one chapter and consecrated in the name of the holy Apostle Andrew. In 1805, a stone fence was built, and in 1882 a stone bell tower appeared on it. In 1845, the aging Andreevsky side-chapel was dismantled, and a new one was built in its place. During 1885, two-storey abbot chambers were built, but already in 1899 a prosphora building was erected in their place.
Now the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is an active parish church. An icon-painting workshop functions under him. In 2007, the cathedral was transferred to the St. John the Theologian monastery as a monastery compound.
