Church of the Ascension of the Lord beyond the Serpukhov Gate

The parish Church of the Ascension of the Lord, known to Muscovites as the church beyond the Serpukhov Gate, stands in Zamoskvorechye and belongs to the Moskvoretsky deanery. The church has five altars: the main one dedicated to the Ascension of the Lord, and the others consecrated in honor of the Jerusalem Icon of the Mother of God, St. Alexis the Man of God, St. Sergius of Radonezh, and St. Nicholas.

The parish’s history began in 1696, when the Danilov Monastery gave up part of its lands near the Serpukhov Gate — the site where the boundary of the Zemlyanoy Gorod once ran — for development. A wooden church dedicated to the Ascension was soon built here, with a side chapel of the Nine Martyrs of Cyzicus, though the main altar was consecrated only in 1700. The stone church was laid down in 1709 on the site of the earlier wooden building.

Construction was funded by Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, the eldest son of Peter the Great from his first marriage, and the design is attributed to a circle of masters that included Domenico Trezzini, Ivan Michurin, and Dmitry Ukhtomsky — architects who at that time worked on both church and secular buildings in the new Russian capital. On October 9, 1714, the lower, heated tier was consecrated, housing the altar of the Jerusalem Icon of the Mother of God, alongside the chapel of the Nine Martyrs of Cyzicus and the chapel of St. Alexis, whose name the project’s patron himself bore. After Tsarevich Alexei’s execution in 1718, funding for construction ceased, and the work dragged on for decades: the upper, unheated church was completed and consecrated only in July 1762, already under the reign of Empress Catherine II.

The building rises on a tall rectangular base, or podklet, which houses the lower church with its three chapels, and is encircled by an open gallery. Above the main volume rises a lantern octagon, crowned with a small dome on an octagonal drum. The walls of the quadrangle and octagon are decorated with paired pilasters, and part of the white-stone capitals were left uncarved — the work was never finished during the protracted construction.

In the 1830s–1840s the church was significantly rebuilt, but far harsher changes came in the Soviet era: the church was closed in 1929, and a year later its fence and bell tower were dismantled, the almshouse building was demolished, and the drum and dome were destroyed; the interior spaces were handed over to various institutions.

Revival began in 1990, when a community of believers was registered, and services resumed in the church in 1991. Restorers rebuilt the bell tower, drum, and dome — today the building is protected as a federally significant cultural heritage site. In 1994 an Orthodox children’s shelter was opened at the church. The five-altar church beyond the Serpukhov Gate remains an active parish to this day, preserving the memory of the dramatic history of its construction, begun by a tsar’s son and completed only half a century later.