Description of the attraction
The current appearance of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Zvonary was created by the famous architect of the 18th century Karl Blank, although the temple itself was founded in the 15th century, during the reign of Ivan III the Great.
The first church on the site of the temple was wooden and was known as the Church of St. Nicholas Bozhedomsky - adjacent to it was the so-called "squalid house", a small building where the bodies of the dead beggars, wanderers, found drowned people and other unfortunates were taken. The church in the "poor house" suffered several times from fires, until after the middle of the 17th century it was rebuilt in stone.
The Nikolskaya Church received the name “in the Bells” a little later, when the watchmen of the Moscow Kremlin churches and bell-ringing masters, including those who served on the Ivan the Great bell tower, began to settle in these places.
The construction of the next stone building of the temple was financed in the second half of the 18th century by Count Ivan Vorontsov, whose estate was located nearby. Vorontsov entrusted the development of the project to Karl Blank. The construction of a new building in the Moscow Baroque style continued until 1781. With minor changes after the war of 1812 and at the beginning of the 20th century, this version of the building has survived to this day.
Under the Soviets, the temple was closed in the 30s and turned into a warehouse. Later, one of the departments of the Moscow Architectural Institute was located in its premises. In the mid-90s, the restoration of the temple began, and after a couple of years it acquired the status of a courtyard of the Pyukhtitsa women's monastery, located in Estonia.
Currently, the temple has several side-altars, one of which is consecrated in the name of Nicholas the Wonderworker, according to the main altar, the temple is named in honor of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos. The most revered shrines of the temple are the icons "Dormition of the Mother of God" and the icon of the Mother of God "Seeking the Lost". The building of the temple is protected by the state as an object of cultural heritage.
