Saviour’s Transfiguration Cathedral

OBJECT DESCRIPTION

The cathedral is one of several buildings that comprise the Saviour’s Transfiguration Monastery Complex. Archaeological fragments have been added to the cathedral’s museum objects and are still preserved today.

The Transfiguration Cathedral was constructed in the south-western part of the Kazan Kremlin. The wooden church on a white stone basement (lower tier) was originally built in the 1550s under the name Preobrazhenskaya (Transfiguration Church). The first Archbishop of Kazan, Gurias, took vows here and was buried behind the altar of the Transfiguration Cathedral on December 5, 1563, making his grave the first in the churchyard of the Saviour’s Transfiguration Monastery. Later, famous priests and professors from the Kazan Theological Academy, merchants, and military officials were buried here.

The wooden church burnt down in 1579, and a new stone six-column, five-domed Transfiguration Cathedral with three altar apses (the protrusion of the cathedral building where the altar was positioned) was built upon its place. The cathedral was built on the wooden church’s stone foundation that had survived.

The northern and southern walls of the Transfiguration Cathedral were expanded with galleries in the 18th century. A vaulted ambulatory (terrace) was attached from the south at the level of the cathedral’s lower tier, while two-storey galleries were added from the north, and their lower floor had cross vaults resting on large white stone trapezoidal skewbacks. The gallery’s second floor served as a corridor between the cathedral, the Father Superior’s house, and the Church of Saint Nicholas-Ratny. A spacious front porch sat on the gallery’s east side.

In the middle of the 18th century, Archimandrite Theophilus Ignatovich elevated the walls of the Transfiguration Cathedral, replaced the ancient domes on the barrel-shaped roof with new ones — «on iron arches» and covered the church with iron for the first time.

In 1901, an annex was added on the west side to span the cathedral’s whole width.

In the 1920s, the Saviour’s Transfiguration Cathedral was exploded.

Its foundation and «cave» have remained intact to this day. The object was added to the museum objects.