Description of the attraction
The first church of St. Simeon the Stylite beyond the Yauza was built in 1600 - most likely in honor of the wedding of Boris Godunov to the throne, who ascended the Russian throne two years earlier, and this happened on the day of the memory of Simeon the Stylite.
Simeon the Stylite lived at the end of the 4th - the beginning of the 5th century and went down in the history of Christianity as a hermit who founded a new form of asceticism - stolpniki. Simeon spent his days in prayer, being at the top of a stone tower (pillar), and from there preached sermons.
The temple consecrated in his honor in Moscow is located on Nikoloyamskaya Street, which got its name from another church - Nikolskaya in Rogozhskaya Yamskaya Sloboda.
The official history of this temple has been known since the middle of the 17th century: in 1657 it already existed in stone. About eighty years later, in the first half of the 18th century, the temple was rebuilt and consecrated anew. In the second half of the same century, a two-aisled refectory and a bell tower were added. The famous Moscow architect Rodion Kazakov is called the author of the project of the temple.
At the very end of the 18th century, the dome of the temple collapsed, and restoration work was required again, which were interrupted by the outbreak of the Patriotic War. After the renovation, the church was consecrated again in 1813, but the renovation work continued throughout the 19th century: the refectory was rebuilt, a new iconostasis was created, a large bell was cast, for which a new bell tower had to be built in three tiers. The bell tower was designed by the architect Nikolai Kozlovsky.
In the mid-20s of the last century, the temple of Simeon the Stylite was closed, the building was first rebuilt (it became seven-story), then it was occupied by various institutions, and the upper part of the bell tower was dismantled. The building was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-90s.
