Church of St. Nicholas in Old Vagankovo

The Church of St. Nicholas in Old Vagankovo stands in the lane of the same name next to Pashkov House, on land that, before being absorbed into Moscow in the sixteenth century, was the separate village of Vagankovo. Today it is an active parish church of the Central Deanery of the Moscow Diocese, built into the complex of the Russian State Library.

The exact founding date of the church is unknown: according to some accounts, a wooden church on this site belonged to a metochion of the Nikolo-Peshnoshsky Monastery, while others hold that the first stone building appeared as early as 1497 and was rebuilt in 1523. The most widely accepted version holds that the stone church was built in 1531 under Vasily III, presumably by the architect Petrok Maly. In the first half of the seventeenth century the deteriorated building was dismantled down to its base and rebuilt anew on the original white-stone foundation; according to a 1660s drawing by the Austrian envoy Meyerberg, the church then had three tent-shaped domes, and by the end of the century it had gained a southern chapel of Sergius of Radonezh and a northern winter church of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.

In 1745–1759 the building was rebuilt again, and in 1782 a stone bell tower was added; a decade later the Church of the Sebaste Martyrs was demolished — today a wooden cross stands on its site. The fire of 1812 badly damaged the structure, and the church was temporarily attached to other parishes; in 1842 the bell tower was dismantled, leaving only the lower narthex, while the chapel of Sergius was restored along with its eighteenth-century iconostasis. According to some accounts, the writer Nikolai Gogol and the historian Mikhail Pogodin were among the parishioners.

From the mid-nineteenth century the church effectively became a house church for the Institute for the Nobility, housed in Pashkov House, and later for the Rumyantsev Museum, while remaining under the diocese's jurisdiction. In 1895 the parish began serving military personnel of the artillery department, and its rector became Father Leonid Chichagov — the future hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim, later canonized by the Church; his paintings of the four Evangelists survive to this day. In 1903 architect Georgy Yevlanov built a bell-gable in the Russian style and enlarged the narthex.

After 1917 services were suspended, and in 1924 the building was handed over to the museum as a book depository — contemporaries recalled that volumes were piled almost up to the dome, filling the ambo and the altar. Restoration began in the 1980s, services resumed in 1992, and the church was reconsecrated in 1993; in 1994, in violation of heritage protection laws, the clergy house was demolished.

Today the Church of St. Nicholas in Old Vagankovo remains a rare fragment of an ancient village near Moscow amid a district now dominated by the library — a monument where the fates of the Russian Church, noble education, and the country's principal library intertwine.