Church of the Resurrection in Kadashi

In Zamoskvorechye, between Polyanka and Ordynka streets, stands the Church of the Resurrection in Kadashi — regarded by researchers as once the main, “cathedral” church of the entire district. It occupied a prominent place in the city’s urban composition: one of the main visual axes of old Moscow ran from the bell tower of Ivan the Great through this church and onward to the palace church in Kolomenskoye. Built in the Moscow Baroque style, the building remains to this day one of the most richly decorated structures in Zamoskvorechye.

The village of Kadashevo was first mentioned in 1493 in a charter of the governor Ivan Patrikeyev, and the wooden church there was at the time called “on the Mud” — because of flooding and its marshy bank. The first stone building was erected in 1656, but stood for only about thirty years; its southern apse and an undercroft storeroom beneath the altars survive from that period. The new two-storey, five-domed church was founded in 1687 with funds donated by the Kadashevo merchants Kondrat Dobrynin and his son Longin.

The tall, two-tiered main volume is connected to the refectory by open arches on the ground floor, while the second tier is surrounded by an open gallery — a rare feature that originally wrapped around even the altar apses. To the west rises a slender six-tiered bell tower over forty-three metres high, built partly of white stone and partly of brick. Five faceted drums with onion domes crown the main volume, and carved white-stone window surrounds and cornices lend the façades the sculptural richness typical of the period.

The invasion of 1812 did not spare the church: French soldiers turned the lower church into a stable, fire damaged the bell tower, its furnishings were looted, and its ancient murals were recorded as damaged. Restoration dragged on until 1863, and in 1934 the church was closed altogether — the building was occupied by a succession of Soviet organizations, including, among others, a state security archive and a sports society of a sausage factory. Only in the mid-20th century did architect Galina Alfyorova secure a scholarly restoration of the monument, and in 1966 the building was handed over to the Grabar Art Conservation Centre.

The parish was revived in 1992, and the church was officially returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 2006. In 2009–2010, the area around the church became the centre of a heated urban-planning conflict: a developer planned to build the “Five Capitals” complex on the adjacent plot, which required demolishing the clergy house and neighbouring historic buildings. Protests by parishioners and the public, which the press dubbed the “Battle of Kadashi,” halted construction and ultimately led to the abandonment of the original project.

Among the surviving treasures is a bell cast in 1750 by the master founder Konstantin Slizov, the same craftsman responsible for the great bell on the Kremlin’s main belfry; the Kadashi bell weighs more than six and a half tonnes. Today the Kadashi church is an active parish and a federally protected architectural monument, drawing both pilgrims and connoisseurs of pre-Petrine architecture.