Description of the attraction
The Church of the Resurrection of Christ received its fame, as well as the popular name "Above Eternal Peace", thanks to the painting of the same name by the famous artist I. Levitan. The artist arrived in a small cozy town on the Volga in 1888 and on the very first evening painted a sketch of an old church located high on a hill, right next to the house in which he was staying. Many do not know that another church is depicted on the canvas. Church of Saints Peter and Paul built in the 16th century. stood at the same place on the banks of the Volga River on Mount Levitan (formerly Peter and Paul Mountain) until 1903. It burned down, and in the eighties of the twentieth century, a church similar in size and appearance was brought here from the village of Bilyukovo, Ilyinsky district, Ivanovo region.
The slender, graceful Church of the Resurrection of Christ, as if stretching upward, was built in 1699 from chopped logs, consisting of three cages (log cabins). At first she stood on the boulders. After the wall was sheathed with planks. In 1903, the building acquired a brick foundation. At the end of the 19th century, a three-tiered hipped-roof bell tower was erected, which was destroyed in the 1930s. In the fifties of the same century, as a result of a hurricane, the church lost its only chapter, along with a quadrangular pedestal, restored by the church head Gagin back in 1905. He also changed the wall cladding to board instead of plank, and also expanded the windows.
Having moved in the 1980s. to the old cemetery above the river, the church has become a popular place of pilgrimage for tourists, recalling the old Peter and Paul Church, from which Levitan and his companion Kuvshinnikova wrote their paintings. The artist depicted the church that stood at this place in at least two of his paintings "The Wooden Church in Plyos in the Last Rays of the Sun" and "Above Eternal Peace". There is an opinion that the artist painted the landscape of the painting "Above Eternal Peace" while at Lake Udomlya, near Vyshny Volochkom in the Tver region, but Isaac Levitan was not attracted by that church, and he replaced it with the cozy Plyos church that impressed him so much.
On the eve of the anniversary of the city of Plyos, the authorities improved the ascent leading up the mountain - they erected a comfortable wooden staircase with a handrail that organically fit into the ancient landscape. And although the church is not active at the moment, the mountain is built up with houses and overgrown with trees, and the cemetery has not survived at all, the "folk path" does not overgrow here. Travelers want to admire the famous Levitanian landscape, and painters want to try to paint their "Eternal Peace". Beginning artists come here to pliners, craftsmen and amateurs are looking for inspiration here.
