Description of the attraction
The Church of the Savior of the Image Not Made by Hands at Torgu was built on the funds collected from the townspeople in the period from 1685 to 1690. The second name of the church sounds like "Ruzhnaya", which indicates the complete absence of its own parish at the temple - it is assumed that the donors and worshipers were representatives of the merchant class.
The Church of the Savior is located on the east side of the Assumption Cathedral and fits perfectly into the general plan of the large Gostiny Dvor. The original temple was built of wood either in 1206 or 1216. The temple burned several times and was rebuilt several times. There is information that the last time it burned down during the Polish-Lithuanian invasion, after which for forty years this territory was completely empty.
In the 1650s, a wave of pestilence swept the world, for which reason the townspeople took a vow to build a small stone temple on the same place when the numerous deaths cease. After the disease subsided, a new church was built in 1654.
In 1671, a terrible fire overtook her again - she had to rebuild the temple. The period of construction of the temple coincided with the period of construction of the famous Bishops' House, which is why its influence on the architecture of the temples being built at that time is especially noticeable, which is more related to the Church of Gregory the Theologian. The Church of the Savior looks good against the background of the Rostov Kremlin adjacent to the ensemble.
The Church of the Savior is very beautiful: it has a five dome, presented in an elegant and light form, which is exposed on the roof, equipped with a petal covering; the decoration of the facades is made with the help of an arcature-columnar belt, and graceful belts adorn the church drums. Window openings from the southern façade are framed with unusually beautiful patterned platbands. The building of the temple is quite high, because it stands on the basement, which was previously used as a warehouse for storing various goods.
The interior design was lined up in the style of the Bishops' court: there is no traditional iconostasis in the church, the existing icons are painted on a wall built of stone. In the 19th century, icons were upholstered with wood, after which they were covered with copper frames, which makes it seem that this is a completely ordinary iconostasis. The wall surfaces are covered with frescoes painted between 1762 and 1764 by an artel led by Afanasy Shustov, a Yaroslavl master. To date, it has been reliably proven that the temple was signed immediately after the completion of the main construction work.
Wall painting is located in the temple in five belts: in the upper belts the earthly life of Jesus Christ is clearly presented, and the remaining belts are a unique creation of iconography, occupying the western and northern walls of the temple. Here you can see the images: "About the lost coin", "About the good Samaritan", "About ten virgins." The lower tiers are dedicated to the current cycle of the Passion of Christ, in which the famous Procession to Golgotha deserves special attention.
Throughout the history of the Savior Cathedral, he has always been somewhat different from others - he took part in a wide variety of rituals that were held in the Assumption Cathedral. For example, on the day of Palm Sunday, a “donkey” was brought to the temple for the process of “procession on a donkey,” which marked the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem. The Church of the Savior on Torgu was an integral part of the cathedral complex, because in the past it was not fenced off directly from the cathedral.
In the 19th century, a large warm side-chapel was added to the Church of the Savior, and a small bell tower was built. During the reign of Soviet power, the temple was closed, and some of the frescoes were simply whitewashed. At the end of the 20th century, the building housed the city library. Unfortunately, the unprecedented rise of internal groundwater has had a particularly strong effect on the remaining church frescoes. In addition, the foundation of the temple was damaged, which endangered the existence of the entire building. In mid-2003, the Church of the Savior on Torgu became one of the participants in the World Monuments Fund program in the restoration of historically significant buildings and structures.
