Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God (Pulkovo)

Early Temples

The first mention of the temple in the "village at Polkola" dates back to 1500 . According to the Scribe books, there was the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was destroyed in the XVII century , during the years of Swedish rule .

On October 14 (25), 1749, a wooden church was consecrated in the Lower Podgorny Sloboda in the village of Bolshoi Pulkovo by Archbishop Theodosius (Yankovsky) . In 1755 - 1757, the temple was renewed after the fire and consecrated on July 28 ( August 8 ), 1757 by Bishop Sylvester (Kulyabka) . Part of the icons was transferred to the new church from the iconostasis of the Nikolsky side chapel of the Sign Church of Tsarskoye Selo . The temple was demolished in 1793 .

Stone Church

The decision to build a new, stone church was probably born in 1782 , because on October 2 (13), 1782, the Tsarskoye Village Construction Bureau entered into a contract with contractor German Afanasyev, which provided for the temple’s full readiness for consecration by September 1 (12), 1784 . May 29 ( June 10 ), 1783, Catherine II determined the place of the new church, which was laid on May 30 ( June 11 ) by the Dean of the Priest Stefan Ivanov.

The temple was built by the architect D. Quarenghi on public funds allocated by the empress.

The church was solemnly consecrated in 1785 . In 1831, a stone chapel was built in the church fence, closer to the highway. In 1908, the church was renovated.

The church was closed in 1938 . The buildings of the temple and the chapel were destroyed to the ground during the Great Patriotic War during the counterattack of the Soviet troops.

By the beginning of 2011, only the foundations of the temple and a nearby one-story stone canteen house were preserved. During restoration work, in the basement of the church were found bedsteads and a chimney for a "potbelly stove." The remains of the temple are likely to be mothballed.

Temple Restoration

In the summer of 2009, a wooden eight-pointed bow cross was installed on the foundation of the temple. Then, in connection with the plans for the creation of the ExpoForum Convention and Exhibition Center in this area, a project for the restoration of the temple appeared ^[2] . On August 10, 2011, a moleben was first served at the site of the temple ^[3] .

On September 14, 2011, aside from the old foundation, the foundation stone was laid in the foundation of the temple. The bookmark was made by the bishop of Peterhof Markell (Vetrov) in the service of archpriests Victor of Moscow and Gennady Zverev and priest Daniil Vasilevsky. The new temple is a replica of the original building and is located at a higher point than originally. Now it is located on the territory of the ExpoForum congress and exhibition complex. According to architect Rafael Dayanov, the old church dominated the territory, and the building had to be relocated due to a change in the urban planning situation so that it would not be in the hollow. The construction project was developed by the Liteiny part-91 architectural bureau. Construction was performed by the company LLC "SMU-837". On July 4, 2014, crosses were erected and consecrated ^[4] . As of May 2016 , the interior of the temple was completed, work was done to improve the territory.

The temple was built in the style of classicism . Its unusual appearance for Russian church architecture is fully consistent with the passion of Empress Catherine II "the revival of antiquity." Quarenghi embodied the image of a small temple, focused on early Christian antiquity in the view of the era of classicism. In terms of composition, organization of the interior space and the decoration of the facades, the church is very close to the churches built by the architect at the same time: the Voznesenskaya church in Fedorovsky Posad and the Preobrazhenskaya church in Moscow Slavyanka . The similarity of the projects is such that the researchers were not always sure of the fidelity of their attribution.

The temple has a simple cubic volume with a single space covered by a wide cylindrical vault. The building is covered with a four-pitched roof without a dome and a spire. The western facade of the temple is crowned with two square towers ^[5] , in one of which the bell tower was located. The building has three entrances: central, northern and southern. The narthex was added in 1823 at the expense of the St. Petersburg merchant Vasily Semyanov and was not restored during the reconstruction of the church. In the niche of the altar apse is the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, made in the tempera technique.

The corner of the building to contain the spread of the vaults was reinforced from the inside by pylons, which makes the interior space cruciform. The side niches inside are also covered by cylindrical arches of the same height with the main longitudinal arch, at their intersection in the center of the temple a cross arch is formed. The temple is illuminated through large semicircular windows at the top of the niches. Inside the walls of the temple are golden, with white rods , cornices and paneled frames. An ornamental strip passes under the cornice. The central vault (like the altar with the west) is painted in blue, on its sides are the images of the four Evangelists.

The church is single-throne. In the High place is the image of the Resurrection of Christ. The four-tier iconostasis is white with gilding, restored as a copy of the original, written according to the drawings and instructions of Quarenghi, academician of painting of the Imperial Academy of Arts Ivan Akimovich Akimov . The first iconostasis was cut in 1784 - 1785 by the master Franz Bryullo.

Among the shrines in the church before the destruction, an altar cross was revered with the relics of saints Saint Athanasius of Tsaregradsky , Great Martyr Barbara , martyr Basil, Saint Gregory the Wonderworker , Rev. Nikon Sukhoi, Rev. Titus of the Caves.

At the beginning of the 20th century , the parish included:

• village of Big Pulkovo
• Kamenka (the intersection of Pulkovo highway and the Ring Road) ^[6]
• Catlino (area south of the Kazan cemetery )
• Sands (Pogorelovo district) ^[7]
• Podgornoe Pulkovo (the intersection of Pulkovo and St. Petersburg Highways)
• Rare Kuzmino (Redkoe Kuzmino street, Aleksandrovskaya village) ^[6]
• Tolmachevo (territory east of Pogorelovo)

• Meshchaninov M. Yu. Temples of Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk and their immediate vicinity: A Brief Historical Guide. - 2nd ed., Rev. and additional .. - St. Petersburg. : Genio Loci, 2007 .-- S. 362-368. - ISBN 5-9900655-3-1 .

• Folk catalog of orthodox architecture
• The destroyed temples of St. Petersburg
• About the restoration of the church