Transfiguration Cathedral (Dnipro)

The first project of the cathedral of the French architect Claude Geroy was approved in 1786 , where it was planned that the Transfiguration Cathedral would be larger than St. Paul's Cathedral outside the city walls in Rome. About this in his "Outlines of the city of Yekaterinoslav" writes G. A. Potemkin, referring to Catherine II:

Drawings of the cathedral by Claude Geroy — the main and side facades, the plan — have been preserved in the Russian Military Historical Archive in Moscow (the authorship was established by the architectural historian, Professor S. B. Revsky).

Fulfilling the desire of customers to build a city in the ancient Greek and Roman manner, Gerua designed the temple in the form of a huge five-nave basilica. It is believed that the model for him served as the world's largest Roman temple of San Paolo fuori le Mura . Initially, the cathedral was planned in 71 fathoms (approx. 150 m) long, 21 (approx. 45 m) wide and 65 (approx. 139 m) high, but later Prince Potemkin indicated increasing the height of the building by one arshin (71 cm) to exceed the cathedral St. Peter in Rome. The main entrance was to be decorated with a huge portico of the Corinthian order of eight columns and two small domes. The same gigantic, only six-columned porticoes decorated the side entrances. The building was crowned by a huge dome on a high drum, rising above the middle cross of the cathedral.

The laying of the first stone was carried out in a solemn atmosphere of the Tauride voyage by Catherine II and Joseph II on May 9 (20), 1787 . But the construction of the cathedral did not go beyond the foundation in connection with the war that began in the same year with Turkey , and then, after the death of Catherine, in view of the ban on stone construction in the Novorossiysk province .

The re-laying of the temple took place in 1830, and it became 6 times smaller. The author’s name was controversial for a long time, only in the 1950s the architectural historian I. A. Burlakov was able to prove that the Preobrazhensky Cathedral was a creation of Andreyan Zakharov (1761-1811), the great Russian architect of the Classicism era, the creator of the famous Admiralty in St. Petersburg. The design of the cathedral was developed by him in 1805-1806.

The construction was completed on May 9, 1835, and on June 29 the cathedral was consecrated by the ruling bishop, Archbishop Yekaterinoslavsky, Kherson and Tauride Gabriel (Rozanov) .

The cathedral was built in a classic style and has a T-shaped configuration. Its front part is expanded to create two limits with altars in it: the left - in honor of the Great Martyr Catherine and the right - St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. A drum and a dome with a diameter of more than 8 meters, which rests on four rectangular sails of the arch, rise above the middle pre-altar part. The walls of the drum have 16 oblong windows, between which eight biblical prophets are depicted, and slightly lower on the arches are the images of the evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The entrance porch of the cathedral is crowned with a two-tier ampere bell tower with a spire, edged near its base with eight copper gilded vases - the creations of Hierodeacon Anthony. In addition to the main (western) entrance, there are two more in the cathedral: northern and southern. All of them are decorated with six-columned, ionic warrants , porticoes. On the second tier of the bell tower of the Transfiguration Cathedral was a bell weighing 385 pounds (6.16 tons), cast in Moscow at the factory of Nikolai Samgin. In the 30s of the XX century, all the bells were removed.

Before the revolution, it was the largest in the city. From 1930 to 1988, services in the cathedral were not conducted, and after 1975, the museum of religion and atheism was housed in the temple. Before that there was a paper warehouse of the Zorya publishing house.

The Transfiguration Church was transferred to the Dnepropetrovsk diocese of the UOC-MP on January 21, 1992. In 2008, a new main evangelist bell was installed on the bell tower.

Necropolis

On the territory of the cathedral is the burial place of diocesan bishops and clergy.

• Archbishop Andrey (Komarov)
• Archbishop Varlaam (Ilyushchenko)
• Bishop Kronid (Mishchenko)
• Archpriest Vladimir Kapustyansky
• Archpriest Konstantin Ogienko
• Fedor Duplenko
• Andrey Kirpichnikov
• Archpriest Sergey Osadovsky

In 1941, the bodies of the dead were brought to the courtyard of the cathedral from nearby streets, which are now buried in a mass grave near the central gate.

• The Crying Savior icon
• Icon of the Mother of God "Iverskaya"
• icon of the Mother of God "It is worthy to eat"
• icon of the Mother of God "Samara"
• the cross is a reliquary with particles of the relics of the Baptist of the Lord John, the holy apostles and evangelists Matthew, Luke, Mark, the holy righteous Anna, the holy great martyr Catherine, the holy noble prince Alexander Nevsky.

The design of the cathedral was also used by architect S.E. Dudin to build the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Izhevsk.

• Transfiguration Cathedral of the city of Dnepropetrovsk
• Transfiguration Cathedral
• Maxim Kavun . Riddles of the Transfiguration Cathedral
• 3D-Model Transfiguration Cathedral, Dnepropetrovsk in the layer "3D-building" Google Earth