Church of the Great Martyr Catherine at Vspolye

The Church of the Great Martyr Catherine at Vspolye stands in the Yakimanka district and since 1994 has served an unusual function for Moscow: the building has been given over to the metochion of the Orthodox Church in America, operating alongside the Patriarch of Moscow. A wooden church presumably appeared here in the 16th century on the territory of the Catherine Bleaching Sloboda, founded by order of Tsarina Anastasia Romanova; some link its founding to the militia of Minin and Pozharsky's victory over the army of Hetman Khodkiewicz in 1612.

By the mid-17th century the parish numbered 87 households, and in 1657 the wooden building was replaced with a stone one — according to legend, at the expense of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, to whom St. Catherine had supposedly foretold in a dream the birth of a daughter. A century later, after her coronation, Empress Catherine II vowed to rebuild the dilapidated church of her heavenly patroness at the crown's expense. The design was entrusted to Karl Blank, who worked in the late Baroque manner in 1766–1775: he left the earlier refectory and the chapel of St. Nicholas untouched, while linking the winter and summer churches with a two-tiered bell tower.

The central part of the building is a square with cut corners, adjoined by the lower volumes of the chapels, the vestibules, and the apse; the upper tier forms a low octagon bearing a massive attic and a dome with round oeil-de-boeuf windows around its perimeter. The portals are framed by paired columns, and the façades are decorated with large window surrounds. In 1769 a fence made from elements of the railing of Cathedral Square in the Kremlin, featuring double-headed eagle figures, was erected around the complex. The icons for the iconostasis were painted by Dmitry Levitsky and Vasilevsky.

The fire of 1812 seriously damaged the church, and it was restored by the architect Fyodor Shestakov; half a century later, in 1870–1872, the winter church was rebuilt by Pavel Petrov, who reconsecrated the main chapel in honor of the Icon of Christ Not Made by Hands. In 1920–1924 Patriarch Tikhon served the patronal feast day here. In April 1922 about one hundred ninety-five kilograms of church valuables were confiscated, and in 1931 the church was closed: the bell tower and domes were dismantled, the venerated image of Catherine was transferred to another church, and its fate remains unknown.

The building was occupied by offices and production facilities — a design bureau for instrument-making and the Grabar restoration workshops operated here. By 1990 the workshops occupied the entire area of the church, but two years later part of the premises was returned to the Church. By decision of Patriarch Alexy II, the church was handed over in 1994 to the representation of the Orthodox Church in America, though the transfer of all the premises stretched on until 2006.

The renovated church was solemnly consecrated on 11 June 1999 — the rite was jointly led by the head of the Russian Church, Alexy II, and the primate of the American Orthodox parishes, Theodosius. Since then several rectors have led the parish, and in various years the belt of St. John of Shanghai was temporarily displayed here. Today the Church of Catherine at Vspolye remains not only a monument of the Catherine the Great era, but also a symbol of the connection between the Orthodox communities of Russia and North America.