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Moscow Churches: Noticing the Past

I‘m not sure if we, as Muscovites, actually realise how many churches there are in our city centre. Fair enough, there were even more, and we’ve long heard complaints that many of them had been destroyed in the Soviet era. Having lived and travelled around Britain for 7 years, I now cannot help wondering if those churches that were destroyed had decayed to the extent that it was cheaper to destroy them than to repair? On the other hand, for all the beauty of Russian churches, not all of them boast a “civic-friendly” design that would easily allow to convert them into living or business spaces, like they do in the UK. I know that in the eyes of the pious, wherever they live, it is an act of blasphemy to make use of the house of God for any purpose, other than worship. But as the population grows, the question of accommodation rises sharply. “Accommodation” shouldn’t be understood merely as a place to live, but also figuratively, as provision the opportunities for work and leisure. Perhaps in the not so distant future we will have to rethink our attitude to a religious space, and maybe by such means we will also be able to acknowledge the omnipresence of one God across many religious practices.

For now, though, we are left with a number of beautiful ancient churches, cathedrals, and monasteries within the city of Moscow. The church on the photo above is a 17th c. church of St Vladimir at the Old Gardens in Starosadsky Pereulok (Lane) that is separated from the Lutheran church of St Peter and Paul by the State Historical Library in the same street. On the left is the Church of Holy Trinity in Khokhlovsky Pereulok (Lane); and Vysokopetrovsky Monastery in Petrovka St. is on the right.

Moscow Churches: After the Sunday Sermon

I strolled up and down several streets in one of my favourite parts of central Moscow; in one of them, Starosadsky Pereulok that also houses the State Historical Library, stands this beautiful Lutheran church erected in the 19th c. While I am planning to tell more about it and show more photos, here is a picture I took of a man who’d just gone out from the church doors. He genuinely didn’t notice me, just stood still and looked forward. I feel there is something metaphoric in this, whatever you leave behind, there is always something to look forward to…

The Entrance to a Moscow Church

Yesterday I had a walk in the centre of my native city; I was walking past the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady in Pechatniki, a beautiful building that had seen several stages in its development, from 1695 well into the beginning of the 20th c. It is a listed building, but I was impressed by the entrance (which is closed, incidentally, you need to use the one in the main road): the spruces covered with snow, the wooden doors, the whitewashed stone, and the icon above the doors, it is almost everything you would expect a Russian church to look like!

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