Church of the Transfiguration- an Orthodox church, an architectural monument of federal significance, located on the territory of the Kizhi Museum-Reserve, part of temple complex Kizhi Pogost.

General information

Built in 1714 on the site of the same name tent church, burned down in 1694.

The height from the base to the cross of the central chapter is 37 m, the size in plan is 20.6 × 29 m.

Refers to the type of wooden eight-tiered churches. The basis of the composition of the structure is an octagonal frame - “octagon” - with four two-stage sections located at the cardinal points. The eastern altar area has a pentagonal shape in plan. From the west, a low frame of the refectory (narthex) adjoins the main frame. Two more octagonal frames of smaller sizes were placed in succession on the lower octagon.

The church is crowned with twenty-two domes, placed in tiers on the roofs of cut-offs and octagons, which have a curved roof shape - the so-called “barrel”. The shape and size of the chapters vary in tiers, which gives a peculiar rhythmic pattern to the appearance of the church. The refectory is covered with a three-pitched roof. The entrance to the church is made in the form of a two-way covered porch on consoles. The upper and lower platforms of the porch are covered with gable roofs on carved pillars. The upper octagons rest on the intersecting beams of the underlying octagons - “transitional quadrangles” - and are braced with log struts.

The basis of the interior of the church is a four-tier iconostasis, including 102 icons.

In 1990, the temple was included in the UNESCO World Natural and Cultural Heritage List.

Among researchers of wooden architecture, there is an opinion that the prototypes of the Kizhi Transfiguration Church are the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, located in Vytegorsky district, and the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, located in the Arkhangelsk region.

History of the restoration of the Church of the Transfiguration

The most significant restoration work was carried out in 1949-1959 under the leadership of architect A. V. Opolovnikov.

In 1980-1983, emergency work was carried out with the installation of an internal metal frame in order to prevent a possible collapse of the church building.

In 1999-2001, a project for a comprehensive restoration of the church was developed by the St. Petersburg Institute “Spetsproektrestavratsiya”.

Church of the Transfiguration Currently being restored, the entire structure is supported by an internal metal frame. The restoration is carried out by the lifting method, in which part of the temple is hung due to the above-mentioned metal structure, the logs located below the hung part of the church are removed, examined and, if their condition requires it, replaced with new ones.

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Notes

Literature

• Orfinsky V.P. Wooden architecture of Karelia. - L., 1972
• Opolovnikov A.V. Russian wooden architecture. - M., 1986
• Orfinsky V.P. Church of the Transfiguration in Kizhi and its place in the history of Russian architecture // Current problems of research and salvation unique monuments wooden architecture of Russia. - St. Petersburg, 1999
• Karelia: encyclopedia: in 3 volumes / chapter. ed. A. F. Titov. T. 3: R - Y. - Petrozavodsk: Publishing House "PetroPress", 2011. P. 249-384 pp.: ill., map. ISBN 978-5-8430-0127-8 (vol. 3)

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Excerpt characterizing the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord on the island of Kizhi

The twenty-two-domed Church of the Transfiguration is surprisingly proportionate and majestic. The church was erected in the Kizhi churchyard in 1714 on the site of an old one that was burned by lightning. It rises to 37 meters (this is the height of an 11-story building). The construction is associated with the name of Master Nestor: legend says that after finishing the work, he threw the ax far into Lake Onega and said: “Master Nestor built this church; there was not, is not and will not be like this.”

The entire church is made of wood. Despite the apparent complexity of the composition, the plan and volumetric-spatial scheme of the Church of the Transfiguration are extremely simple. At its base lies the so-called twenty-wall, i.e. an octagon with four cuts - lower parts of the building, organically included in the overall composition and adjacent to the four mutually opposite faces of the octagon. On the bottom. On the largest eight there is another, smaller one, and on it there is another one - the smallest one. The top of each ledge is two-stage, and each ledge is covered with a lancet barrel with a dome. A pointed barrel is one of the forms of roofing: both of its slopes are rounded, and at the top they converge at an acute angle, like the keel of a boat. The lower tier consists of four chapters, above it is another, the same. The third tier already consists of eight chapters standing on barrels that crown each face of the lower octagon. Even higher is a tier of four chapters standing on the middle octagon, and finally, on the top octagon there is one. But the biggest chapter is the one that completes the entire composition. The last one, twenty-second, is located below all of them - above the altar part. The entire multi-domed five-tier composition is inscribed in one clear and solid pyramidal volume. The chapters of the first, lower, tier are larger than the chapters of the second. The chapters of the third, middle, tier are larger than all the others, and the upper, fourth, are smaller than all of them. The last one. the largest central chapter provides the final compositional accent, marking the height of the entire structure.

The “twenty-walled” plan predetermined a very significant feature of the architectural image of the Church of the Transfiguration - the centricity and height of the composition. The porch of the church is spacious, wide, front, with two flights of stairs. The lower platforms are covered with gable roofs lying on carved pillars, and the upper one rests on brackets made of powerful logs. Together with the flights of stairs, it is covered with a common roof, thanks to which the entire porch acquires completeness and integrity of the composition. A pentagonal portal with wide massive jambs and heavy door leaves is the entrance to the church. Behind it is a low, dark gallery-canopy. Opposite the main entrance from the porch there is almost the same door with a portal leading to the central octagon - the main room of the church. In contrast to the low gallery, the church looks bright, high, and solemn. Overhead is the “sky” - a multifaceted pyramidal ceiling. The structural basis of the “sky” is a rigid frame consisting of radially directed inclined beams assembled in the center around a strong locking ring. The triangular gaps between them were filled with shields-icons, irretrievably lost during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War, only the narrow boards that framed them have been preserved. The frame of the “sky” itself and the painting of the beams have been preserved authentic: on a white background there are ornaments of plant motifs - red, yellow, blue, green. The ornament is not repeated on any of the sixteen beams. The iconostasis was made in the mid-18th century. Only a few icons have survived from the earlier decoration.

By type, the Church of the Transfiguration is a “summer” or “cold” church. They served in it only on especially solemn occasions, and even then only during the short northern summer. Its frame is laid “dry” without laying grooves with moss and tow; it does not have winter frames and double doors, insulated floors and ceilings.

Literature: Opolovnikov A.V. Russian North. M.: Stroyizdat, 1977. Guide The world around us. Karelia. M.: Publishing house "Simon-press", 2003

The Kizhi Pogost, one of the oldest Russian settlements in Zaonezhie, has preserved to this day two churches that are among the most significant creations of Russian wooden architecture.

The first of them, Preobrazhenskaya, built in 1714, has the shape of an octagon with four cuts, crowned with twenty-two chapters. Inside, there is an interesting “sky” ceiling with beams decorated with paintings, and a three-walled 18th-century iconostasis. The outer plank cladding of the walls and the covering of the barrels and heads with iron are late.

The second church is the Intercession Church, 1764. On the low roof of the octagon there are nine small octagons bearing heads on round necks; the tenth chapter surmounts the barrel covering the altar. The church is covered with planks, but has retained the plowshare covering of the domes and barrels and the altar and the planks on the hens and streams of the refectory.

The free-standing hipped bell tower, built in 1874 on the site of the old one, is an approximate reproduction of the latter.

Currently, another restoration of the world-famous Church of the Transfiguration is underway, causing extremely negative criticism. According to the official website of the Kizhi Nature Reserve, there is no cause for concern. According to professionals who criticize the chosen lifting technique, “the project is experimental in nature and its implementation will cause irreparable harm to the temple. UNESCO experts are currently studying the problem.

http://www.archnadzor.ru/2011/03/05/russkoe-derevo-5/

The Christianization of Obonezhye is associated with the arrival of Novgorodians in these regions, rich in fish and furs. Already in the 12th century, Novgorod firmly established itself on the shores of Lake Onega. Local tribes were partly pushed to the north-west, partly assimilated with the newcomers, adopting their customs, language and faith. Apparently, it was at this time that the first church, or at least a chapel, appeared on the island of Kizhi. Before the Novgorodians, the Baltic-Finnish tribes Ves and Korela lived here. It was they who gave the island the name Kizhi - from the word “kizhat”, which means “games”. According to researchers, in those ancient times there was a pagan temple on the island, because, as is known, pagan rituals often accompanied by ritual games, songs and dances. This assumption is supported, oddly enough, by the fact that it was on the island of Kizhi that the temple ensemble was formed, for churches were often erected in those places from which idols were expelled. At the end of the 15th century, Novgorod with all its vast possessions became part of the Moscow state. Kizhi by this time was the center of the Spaso-Kizhi churchyard (there was already a temple in the name of the Savior - and, most likely, Preobrazhensky), covering the southern part of the Zaonezhsky peninsula with one and a half hundred villages.

The first documentary mention of Kizhi dates back to 1582 - earlier records, unfortunately, have not survived: “The Spassky churchyard in Kizhi on Lake Onega, and on the churchyard is the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, and another church is the Intercession of the Holy Virgin.” The Kizhi churches in 1616 are described in more detail: “And on the churchyard of the Holy Transfiguration of the Holy Savior there is a wooden church with porches, a tent top and the Intercession Holy Mother of God, warm, or wooden." The bell tower was also mentioned at the same time (“the bell in the bell tower”). This, however, was not the ensemble that exists today, but its predecessor, which burned down from a lightning strike in the early 1690s (in documentary sources indicate the year 7202 from the creation of the world, which began in September and corresponded to 1693-1694 from the Nativity of Christ). and then the construction of the Transfiguration Church began. It was founded in 1714, on June 6, about which there was a corresponding record on the cross kept in the altar of the church.

There is a legend that the church was built by a certain master Nestor, who, after finishing the work, threw his ax into the lake with the words: “There was not, is not and will not be like that.” But this is only a legend - just like the fact that the plan for the future construction was drawn by Peter I with his own hand; The names of the real “axe artists” are unknown to us. Perhaps, however, these were the same craftsmen who, six years earlier, built the multi-domed Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the village of Ankhimov (present-day Vytegorsky district). This church, unfortunately, burned down in 1963 from an accidental fire lit nearby by some home-grown Herostrats, but images and descriptions remained confirming its amazing similarity to Kizhi churches. It is customary to say that the Church of the Transfiguration was built without a single nail, but this is still a kind of “half-truth”. Nails were used during construction - they were used to nail down the plowshares covering the heads so that they would hold firmly and evenly. The log house itself, despite its apparent “fantastic” appearance, is constructed quite simply and is a twenty-wall structure, that is, an eight-piece with four cuts. The logs were stacked “dry”, without the usual lining of moss or tow, since the church was originally built as a summer church and did not need additional insulation. They served here from Easter to Intercession.

The Kizhi temple ensemble at the end of the 18th century was the object, if not of research, then at least of interested attention of travelers who visited Petrozavodsk for official or personal reasons. Thus, the naturalist N. Ya. Ozeretskovsky, who sailed on lakes Ladoga and Onega in 1785, noted: “Near the Klimets Island there is also the island of Kizhi, which is no more than 5 miles long; on it there is a graveyard of the same name and consists of two wooden churches , of which one has 23 domes and stands on an elevated place; its appearance is very beautiful. There are 2,358 parishioners of both sexes in this churchyard.”

In 1827, the Kizhi parish, which previously belonged to the Novgorod and Arkhangelsk dioceses, became part of the newly formed Olonets diocese. About fifty villages with ten chapels were assigned to it. The Kizhi churches also owned some - however, very modest - amount of land: 20 dessiatines of arable land and 11 dessiatines of mowing land. In addition, the churches owned two houses for clergy. Local residents actively donated funds for the maintenance and decoration of temples. Thus, in 1829, parishioners collected more than two thousand rubles to cover the domes of the Transfiguration Church with iron - in accordance with the then ideas about splendor. Documentary sources also contain references to “individual” donors who contributed icons and church items to the temple. However, the parish was not rich. The description of the sacristy of the Church of the Transfiguration is striking in its “asceticism”. Among other property, very unselfish, there are mentioned “pine crowns for spouses, of which the women’s were split,” a cypress altar cross and carved icons Mother of God and John the Baptist." The scarcity of funds at the disposal of the parish can also be judged by the fact that in the early 1870s, when another major renovation was carried out in the Church of the Transfiguration (it was not so easy to maintain such a large church), the Kizhans specifically asked the diocesan authorities for permission to cancel some of the previously planned work on rebuilding the refectory. Obviously, the need to save money forced them to do this.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kizhi gained all-Russian fame. Painters, researchers, and architects often came here. Such artists, who were in love with everything ancient Russian, as Igor Grabpr and Ivan Bilibin, also visited Kizhi. Bilibin responded with enthusiastic words: “Nowhere have I seen such a scope of construction imagination as in Kizhi!” Revolutionary “innovations” did not reach Kizhi immediately. In 1920, the Kizhi Pogost was registered with the state as an architectural monument, which, however, did not prevent worship services. Only in 1935, the village council organized a vote on seventeen local collective farms to close Kizhi churches. Characteristically, only eighty people voted for the closure, and a thousand voted for the continuation of services in churches. But the vote turned out to be just an empty formality. Despite the unequivocally expressed will of the collective farmers, in February 1937 the authorities decided to close the Transfiguration Church to parishioners, leaving, however, for their use the Intercession Church. The Kizhans wrote a complaint to Moscow (a brave act for 1937), which, of course, could no longer help.

In the fall of 1937, the last liturgy was served in the Transfiguration Church. Soon after this, the last rector of the Kizhi churches, Fr. Alexy (Petukhov). A month later he was shot. Thus the service in the Intercession Church stopped. During the Great Patriotic War, Kizhi found itself in territory occupied by Finnish troops. The Finns treated the architectural monuments that fell into their hands with care (even too much - they took all the icons from the iconostasis of the Church of the Transfiguration to Finland), but the people had a much harder time. Many Kizhans went through concentration camps set up by the Finns for the Russian population of Karelia. Return to native land After the occupiers left, not everyone had the chance.

In August 1945, an expedition of architects and restorers arrived in Kizhi, based on the results of which a plan for the first emergency work was drawn up. They began in 1947, and since 1949 they have been carried out by a special design and restoration workshop. It included, in particular, local carpenters who adopted the traditions of craftsmanship from their fathers and grandfathers. The restoration was supervised by the Moscow architect A.V. Opolovnikov, who decided to return, as far as possible, the original appearance of the temples, “retouched” by later renovations. The work was generally completed by the end of the 1950s. At the same time, in 1959, the regulations on the architectural reserve in Kizhi were approved, and the “collection” of wooden buildings from the surrounding villages began. Interest in Kizhi monuments gradually increased, going beyond the boundaries of the scientific and artistic community. This was facilitated by the fascination with the Russian North, which spread among the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1960s. And to Kizhi, which in 1969 acquired the status of the State Historical, Architectural and Ethnographic Museum-Reserve, a real pilgrimage began - and on an international scale.

In 1990, the ensemble of the Kizhi Pogost entered the List World Heritage UNESCO. Regular services in Kizhi have been held since 1997 - so far only in the Church of the Intercession, since the Transfiguration Church is being restored and is closed to visitors. In the future, it is planned to resume liturgical life in this church. But “regular” parish life in Kizhi is impossible; most pilgrims come here from Petrozavodsk, and in 2003, perhaps the most acceptable decision in the current situation was made. According to the decree His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus' opened the Patriarchal Metochion at the Transfiguration Church. Priest Nikolai Ozolin was appointed its rector. The Kizhi churchyard again “received” its original meaning, its walls again grew to the extent of their high purpose - to bring people the message of “the only thing they need.”

The Church of the Transfiguration is one of the most famous architectural monuments in our country. Moreover, its fame extends far beyond Russia, turning Kizhi into a popular tourist attraction. Everywhere in guidebooks they talk about the unique originality of the Transfiguration Church. These words are true - but only partly. Until 1963, not far from Kizhi, you could see a church very similar to the Kizhi one. We are talking about the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the village of Ankhimov, in the Vologda region. I. E. Grabar, who at one time had the opportunity to see both temples, wrote about them: “Not submitting to any symbols and guided, apparently, by only one idea to create a temple of God, extraordinary in its grandeur and appearance, in which the chapters are marked only holiness of the place, the builders created two out-of-the-ordinary monuments of folk art - the temple in Vytegorsky Posad and the temple in Kizhi. Both of them were built at the beginning of the 18th century and, in essence, are identical in design."

Now the Ankhimov church does not exist, and the Church of the Transfiguration has no “close relatives” left, although in a certain sense everyone is related to it wooden temples Russian North. The structural basis of the Spassky Church is an octagon with four cuts oriented to the cardinal points. The altar (eastern) section has the shape of a pentagon in plan. From the western part, a low frame refectory adjoins the main volume. Two more, smaller ones, were placed on the lower octagon of the temple, which gives the temple a “pyramidal” appearance. The Church of the Transfiguration has twenty-two domes, the sizes and shapes of which vary from tier to tier, giving the entire building a special “rhythm”. Initially, apparently, the temple had twenty-five chapters (in any case, the famous traveler Ya. Ya. Mordvinov, who visited Kizhi in 1752, reports about twenty-five chapters).

The following review of the number of chapters of the Transfiguration Church is from the pen of N. Ya. Ozeretskovsky - he counted them twenty-three. As for the Church of the Intercession, it existed until the middle of the 18th century in a tent design and had only two domes. There is no doubt that bringing the number of heads of the temple ensemble to a certain number (33:22 on the Transfiguration Church, 10 on Pokrovsky, 1 on the bell tower) is associated with Christian symbolism 33 chapters according to the 33 years of the Savior’s earthly life. The domes of wooden churches are traditionally covered with aspen ploughshares - planks that have a wedge-shaped (ledges) or rounded end on one side. Aspen is chosen as a material for a ploughshare due to its special properties: over time, it begins to beautifully silver in the sun.

The multi-domed structure of the Transfiguration Church was not a stunning novelty in Russian architecture. Rather, it is a well-forgotten old thing, because from the chronicles it is known that the first (wooden) St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod was “about thirteen peaks.” This number symbolized the Savior and the twelve apostles. An interesting observation was also made by researcher V.A. Gushchina, linking the Kizhi multi-domed structure with the more common hipped-roofed completion of northern wooden churches: “The multi-domed structure of the Transfiguration Church, assembled into a clearly defined pyramidal silhouette, seemed to revive the hipped-roofed completion, establishing it in a new multi-domed form...” The walls of the Church of the Transfiguration were cut down in the most common way - “in the oblo” (or “in the bowl”), when the logs are placed in crowns “with the remainder.” In a log with this method of laying, a recess is made on top into which the overlying log is placed. Adjacent to the main frame of the Church of the Transfiguration on the western side, the refectory is covered with a three-pitched roof. The entrance to it is decorated with a two-way porch. The refectory in the northern church was its most “secular” part. Records of weddings, baptisms, and funeral services were made here. And here peasant gatherings (fuss) were held, and many vital matters for the life of the parish were decided.

For centuries interior decoration Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord underwent natural changes. Being renewed in accordance with necessity (dilapidation) and trends of the time, by the beginning of the twentieth century, when the first art historical research began to be carried out on the temple, it had “gone” far from its original appearance. The floor was painted, the walls were covered with boards, and the altar was covered with wallpaper.

The first survey of the temple’s interiors was carried out in 1926 by members of the All-Russian expedition of the Central Restoration Workshops under the leadership of I. E. Grabar. It was rather superficial, since the expedition worked on the island for only three days. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Transfiguration Church had been empty for several years. Services have not been held there since 1936. In 1943, Finnish occupation troops took the icons of the Church of the Transfiguration to Helsinki, but less than two years later they returned to Karelia in accordance with the peace treaty signed between the USSR and Finland, and in 1952, after restoration carried out by Moscow specialists, they again took their place in iconostasis of the Kizhi temple. The iconostasis is four-tiered (from bottom to top: local, festive, Deesis and prophetic rows), carved, consists of 104 icons. The main room of the temple is illuminated by five windows, the altar by three, and the refectory by six. The height of the church is 37 meters.

From the magazine " Orthodox Temples. Travel to holy places". Issue No. 8, 2012.

In the northern part of Lake Onega, in Karelia, there is a small Kizhi island. This island is famous for the extraordinary beauty of the Kizhi (Spassky) churchyard complex. And a real work of art is the Church of the Transfiguration, cut down without the use of nails.

22-chapter Church of the Transfiguration was built in 1714, at a time when Russia and Sweden shared access to the Baltic Sea. Russia sought to strengthen its position on the shores of the Baltic and “open a window” to Europe. This year a peace treaty was concluded between Russia and Prussia. Swedish territories were the last to withdraw, and the fleet under the command of Peter I captured enemy ships. This first major victory in the history of the Russian fleet allowed Russia to take possession of the lands of Finland.

For the northernmost Russian lands, this victory meant the removal of the state border to the shores of the Baltic and, as a result, safety from a sudden attack by the Swedes. In honor of this, the residents of the northern part of Lake Onega decided to build the Church of the Transfiguration.

The wood for the wooden churches was cut down in winter and floated in the spring. And if the rafts were nailed to the same place three times, a church was built there. The location was also chosen for the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord. According to legends, Tsar Peter I took a direct part in the development of the project for the complex being built. And the chief master Nestor, after finishing the construction, threw his ax into the lake, saying that there is no other church like this and there will never be another.

The Church of the Transfiguration is based on a wooden frame of three octagons. Thus, an almost round shape was obtained, and porches and galleries could be easily added. For the construction of the walls, a concrete wall was used, which is distinguished by its straightness, resinity and strength. The roof was made of thin aspen plates and fastened with hardened nails. The roof is the only place where nails were used. Thin aspen plates were tightly fitted to each other, covering the domes and creating a unique openwork pattern. Another covering was made under the domes so that not a single drop of rain would leak under the roof.

The Transfiguration Church and the 9-domed Intercession Church with a bell tower standing next to it are summer buildings. Services were rarely held in them.

In addition to amazing churches, on the island of Kizhi there are several peasant houses - monuments to the skill of craftsmen of Russian wooden architecture.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the Transfiguration Church was the tallest building in Russia. Its height reached 37 m. However, time is inexorable, and wood is a fragile material. Now the foundation of the church is a metal frame, and the entire iconostasis has been taken to the museum. But the Church of the Intercession is still active. True, you cannot light candles in it.

Today Kizhi is a State Nature Reserve, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1990.

Karelia, 66 km. from Petrozavodsk, a small island on Lake Onega - Kizhi. The path to it lies through the picturesque cluster of islands of the Kizhi skerries. The extraordinary northern nature has become a magnificent backdrop for the amazing creations of wooden architecture that have made these places famous throughout the world.

The history of the island is very ancient. In the Karelian language the word “kizhat” means play. Once upon a time, local residents held pagan holidays and rituals here. And the first mention of a settlement on the island of Kizhi dates back to 1496. Even then, the island was the center of a large rural community of the Spassky-Kizhi churchyard. By the 17th century it already had more than 120 villages. Back in the era of Peter the Great, its most significant structure appeared on the churchyard - the unique wooden Church of the Transfiguration. Many legends are associated with its construction.

According to one of them, during the Time of Troubles, the church stood in a different place, much further north on a hilly hill. One day, on the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary, the island was attacked by the Poles. The people took refuge in the temple, but the invaders burst in and began shooting at unarmed people. One of the arrows pierced the image of the Savior, the other pierced it through. And at that very moment a miracle happened. The Poles suddenly went blind and slaughtered each other. After the desecration, the church was abandoned, and soon it burned down from a lightning strike. The Kizhans decided to build new temple and they floated timber on rafts for construction to the place where there was ashes. But overnight, all the rafts were carried downstream by an unknown force to a place where there was nothing but stones and heather. The rafts were returned. On next night history repeated itself. Then the builders realized that this was not just happening. They began to examine the heather thickets and found in them that same bullet-riddled image of the Savior. A new temple was built on this site.

The Church of the Transfiguration amazes with its grandeur and unusualness. It was built without a single nail. Its height is 17 m, almost the size of an 11-story building, and the temple is crowned with 22 domes, in tiers reaching into the sky.

Later, the Church of the Intercession was built next door for winter services. She is similar to Preobrazhenskaya, but still more modest. The original ensemble of the churchyard was completed by the wooden Tent Bell Tower.

On January 1, 1966, the Kizhi State Historical and Archival Museum was opened on the basis of the Kizhi churchyard ensemble. The most valuable wooden buildings from all over Karelia were transported to the island: the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus, created in the 14th century, several chapels, peasant houses and courtyard buildings. All this was built over many centuries in Russian and Karelian villages along the shores of Lake Onega.

On a small piece of beautiful Karelian land there are unique creations of wooden architecture, a man-made miracle.

From a distance, the silhouette of the 22-domed Church of the Transfiguration is almost impossible to distinguish from the tall, pointed spruce trees growing on the neighboring islands. But as we approach Kizhi, the silhouette of the church grows, neighboring buildings open up, and, finally, the entire ensemble...

The history of Kizhi goes back to the times of “distant antiquity”. These places have long been inhabited by Finnish peoples - Karelians and Vepsians. Probably, at that time there was a pagan temple at this place, because in the Karelian language the word “kizhi” means “place of games”. It is known that the Spassky Kizhi Pogost on a small island on Lake Onega was already in the 15th century the center of a large district, which included 130 villages on the surrounding islands and on the Zaonezhsky Peninsula. Even then, judging by the scribe’s books of clerk Andrei Pleshcheev, there were wooden churches on the graveyard - “Transfiguration of the Savior, and another church is the Intercession of the Holy Virgin.” But only in 1714 a miracle of Russian wooden architecture appeared on the island, which brought world fame to Kizhi.

Built in 1714, in the times of Peter the Great, the Transfiguration Church, however, is closely connected with the pre-Petrine traditions of ancient Russian wooden architecture. Here, not far from the new Russian capital, there was its own artistic life, in which echoes of the old Russian culture were preserved.

The statement that is sometimes found in popular literature that Kizhi had no analogues in Russian wooden architecture is incorrect. Five years before the construction of the Church of the Transfiguration, in 1708, in the village of Ankhimov near the city of Vytegra, a 24-domed Church of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary was built, the silhouette of which was practically repeated for the holiness of the place, the builders created two out-of-the-ordinary monuments of folk art - the temple in Vytegorsky posad and temple in Kizhi. Both of them were built at the beginning of the 18th century and, in essence, are identical in design,” wrote academician I.E. Grabar. External similarity, the abundance of common motifs and elements, the geographical proximity of the two monuments gave reason to believe that both churches were built by the same masters. But, unfortunately, the Church of the Intercession in Ankhimov has not survived to this day - it burned down quite recently, in 1962...

Kizhi masters perfectly mastered the difficult art of creating an ensemble. Different in height and silhouette, the churches of the Kizhi Pogost form a single picturesque group, which cannot be imagined standing, for example, in a city square or among dense urban buildings - no, this ensemble was conceived for life among the expanses of the Russian North. “Let’s say right away,” writes researcher of Russian wooden architecture Y.V. Malkov, “there are no adequate means to describe the Kizhi miracle. No verbal, most detailed portraits and descriptions, no color photographs and slides can evoke and convey that special excitement that you experience in the field of its gravity. This is the resonance of the soul. This is the effect of a masterpiece, where you can neither reduce nor add." It is not for nothing that there is a legend that a master named Nestor, who was building the Kizhi Church, threw his ax into the lake after finishing the work, saying that he would never build such beauty again - “It is not and will never be like that!”

The main element of the ensemble is, undoubtedly, the Transfiguration Church, the most complex structure among all the surviving monuments of northern wooden architecture. The height of the Church of the Transfiguration to the cross of the central chapter is 35 meters. The architect who created the temple was an inimitable creator of forms and motifs. The central volume of the temple is formed by three octagons of decreasing sizes. Twenty-two ploughshare-covered domes of the church are carried away in tiers into the sky, creating an unforgettable and unique silhouette, unlike anything else. The sizes of the chapters vary in different tiers - in the second tier the chapters are slightly smaller than in the first, in the third - larger than in the first and second, and in the fourth the chapters are the smallest. Above them is a large, approximately three times larger, central chapter, crowning the entire structure.

In the 1970s, during a period of euphoric, superficial admiration for Russian wooden architecture, which overnight became “fashionable,” the belief that the church in Kizhi was allegedly built “without a single nail” spread and became firmly entrenched in people’s minds. It is unknown who came up with this myth. In fact, in the construction of the Transfiguration Church, forged iron nails were used in abundance - they were used to fasten the pediment boards. After the festive feeling created appearance temple, the interior of the Kizhi church is somewhat disappointing - it is simple and solemn, there are no bright frescoes, no intricate carvings, no colored tiles. Instead of them there are powerful log walls, wide floorboards, massive door jambs. Only the benches along the walls of the temple are slightly touched by sparse carvings. As in most northern churches, the main decoration of the Church of the Transfiguration was the iconostasis and the “sky” - ceiling painting. But the original decoration of the temple was destroyed during the Great Patriotic War, and the iconostasis was completely redone in the middle of the 18th century, receiving new icons and magnificent baroque gilded carvings, which do not quite fit with the simple and austere interior of the temple. Only a few icons have survived from the early decoration: “Zosima and Savvatiy in the Life”, “George in the Life”, “Transfiguration”.

The Transfiguration Church in Kizhi is one of those great wonders of the world that are better to see once than to hear about them a hundred times. “It is always different,” writes Y.V. Malkov, “from the water and from the depths of the island, in the sun and in the fog, in the morning and in the evening, in summer and winter, near and from afar. It is “all-facade.” It is unapproachable and beckons. .." Well, we have nothing to add to these words - except to join them...