Description of the attraction
The first wooden church on the site of the present Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Kulishki was known from the first half of the 16th century. The church was built in the place where the Russian army gathered before, under the command of Prince Dmitry Donskoy, they went to the Battle of Kulikovo with the army of the Horde temnik Mamai.
This area was called Kulishki, because, apparently, at that time it was the land left after the felling of the forest, intended for arable land. Kulishki were located at the confluence of two rivers - Moscow and Yauza, and now there is Solyanka Street, on which the temple stands. All Moscow streets, whose names come from the word "salt", received them because of their proximity to the Salt Fish Yard, built in the 16th-17th centuries. In addition, the temple stood at the confluence of two roads - on Vorontsovo and in Zayauzie.
Throughout its history, the temple burned twice on a large scale. This happened for the first time in 1547, and after that fire, by the beginning of the 17th century, the building of the temple was rebuilt in brick. The second fire took place during the Patriotic War of 1812, but before the fire, Napoleon's soldiers were in charge, and they took out all the utensils and valuables. The building of the temple, built quite recently, at the beginning of the 19th century, was partially damaged then - its rotunda burned down.
In the 30s of the last century, the church was closed. After the demolition of the heads of the building, it housed institutions of a wide variety of profiles: from a sculptor's workshop to a beauty salon. In the 90s, divine services in the temple were resumed, and it was transferred to the Ossetian community - so the temple became the Alan courtyard, and services in it are also held in the Ossetian language. At the beginning of this century, restoration work was carried out in the building, and in 2010, a monument by Zurab Tsereteli "In memory of the victims of Beslan" was erected near the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. The building of the temple is an object of cultural heritage of the Russian Federation.
