Church of the Three Hierarchs at Kulishki

The Church of the Three Hierarchs at Kulishki stands at the corner of Maly Trekhsvyatitelsky and Khitrovsky lanes, atop Ivanovskaya Gorka in Moscow’s Basmanny District. The church takes its name from its main chapel, dedicated to the three ecumenical teachers — St Basil the Great, St Gregory the Theologian and St John Chrysostom. Since 2018 the lower chapel has borne the name of St Silouan the Athonite, having previously been consecrated in honour of the martyrs Florus and Laurus; the upper chapel is consecrated in honour of the Life-Giving Trinity. The old name of the area, “Kulishki,” is associated with the marshy land at the confluence of the Moskva and Yauza rivers.

In the 15th century, Grand Prince Vasily I built a summer palace with a house church dedicated to St Vladimir on this hill, and the slopes were occupied by palace orchards with fruit trees. Nearby stood the sovereign’s stables, next to which a wooden church of Florus and Laurus, the patron saints of horses, was erected. When the residence of the Moscow metropolitan later appeared close by, a house church in honour of the Three Hierarchs was added to it. In the 16th century the residence moved to the village of Rubtsovo, the former palace churches became parish churches, and the network of lanes that took shape at that time has largely survived to this day.

The stone building, erected at parishioners’ expense, dates from 1674: the two-storey church received a bell tower placed at the corner, a rare feature for Moscow architecture. The lower, heated floor contained two chapels — the Three Hierarchs chapel and the Florus and Laurus chapel — while the upper, unheated tier was consecrated in honour of the Trinity. The squat winter church, with its spacious refectory, serves as the base for the summer church above, which is shifted to the west so that its triple apse ends up above the main space of the lower church. The façades were decorated with carved window surrounds and portals, tall porches led up to the upper floor, and the apses of the heated chapels were crowned with domes covered in wooden shingles (lemekh).

In 1927 the church was closed and handed over to Myasnitskaya Prison; church valuables were removed, and the building was stripped of its domes and had the tent roof of its bell tower dismantled. In the 1930s it was placed under the control of the NKVD, and after a fourth storey was added, the premises were turned into communal apartments. From the 1960s, restorers under the direction of the architect A. I. Okunev worked to recreate the church’s 17th-century appearance, restoring the corner bell tower, the domes and the façade decoration, and from 1987 the building housed the “Pilot” animation studio.

The Orthodox community was revived in 1991, and in the summer of 1992 the building was returned to the Church; the animators, however, only vacated the premises four years later. The first liturgy in the Trinity chapel was celebrated on 6 July 1996; in 2010 Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) performed its great consecration, and the chapels of the Three Hierarchs and of St Silouan the Athonite were consecrated in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Notable parishioners of the church have included the composer Alexander Scriabin, who was baptised here as a child, and the architect Pyotr Baranovsky, who was married within its walls.

Today the church runs choir-conducting courses, a Sunday school and a restoration workshop. It remains one of the few surviving monuments of pre-Petrine architecture on Ivanovskaya Gorka and stands as a reminder of the historical topography of Kulishki, once occupied by the grand-princely residence.