Description of the attraction
The famous Church of the Myrrh-Bearing Women is located at the Yaroslavl Court in the city of Veliky Novgorod. The church was built in 1510 on the site of a simple wooden church of the same name that was previously burnt down in 1508. Before the wooden church was built, there was a stone church built in 1445 and, accordingly, was an even more ancient building of that time. The builder of the Church of the Myrrh-Bearing Women was Ivan Syrkov, who was the ancestor of a large and well-known family of Moscow merchants, whose representatives are mentioned in several generations in Moscow and Novgorod chronicles of the 16th century.
The location of the church in the message about its construction is defined as "in the Yaroslavl courtyard." In addition, it is known that the church was located not far from the "Syrkov dvorik", i.e. in the house where Ivan Syrkov himself lived. It was the family church of the famous Syrkov family, while becoming the first unique architectural monument that appeared in Veliky Novgorod after it was annexed to Moscow. During 1536, the chapel of Matthew the Evangelist was built. Soon a warm chapel of the Presentation of the Lord was added to the main building in 1539, which was soon lit up. At the end of the 16th century, some part of the treasury of Tsar Ivan the Terrible was located in the warehouses of the church. In 1745, the Church of the Myrrh-Bearing Women was transferred into the hands of the Yuryev Monastery. At the request of Archimandrite Photius in 1832, who was the chief abbot of the Yuryev Monastery, the church, together with the courtyard, was assigned to the Syrkov Monastery.
The famous church is divided by powerful vaults into three floors. The first floor has the function of a basement and is located just below ground level. The two lower floors were large and comfortable storage areas. The main volume of the four-pillar temple is made in the form of a cube and is separated by a wall from the western part of the temple. The uppermost floor of the temple was divided by a special ceiling into two tiers; the upper tier had two side-chapels.
After the last restoration was carried out, the roof covering was made of plowshares, and it is this feature that has become a characteristic feature of all Novgorod buildings. At the same time, it was established that all the annexes adjacent to the main building appeared much later and at completely different times. Since the inception of the church, wooden porches have adjoined it.
At the moment, the church houses the regional Children's Cultural Center; it hosts numerous exhibitions, folklore programs and music concerts.
