On the street Gorky, former Alexandrovskaya, and today stands a temple, like a precious casket in burgundy tones. Its silhouette with five domes and a 66-meter bell tower topped with a spire has long been the hallmark of old Saratov. But few people know that this elegant handsome man was born again three times, and once he miraculously escaped death.
It all began in 1859 with a small wooden church built at the expense of the merchant Voronov. It was cold and cramped, did not accommodate the sprawling parish at all. And then the chief architect of the city Alexey Salko took up the work. In the mid-1870s, he designed a stone temple — three thrones, five domes, a completely different scale. Money was collected all over the world: merchants and philistines were not stingy. These walls were painted by an amazing man – Lev Igorev, a local nugget who went from a seminarian to a recognized academician of painting.
The temple was consecrated in the winter of 1885, and life began to boil around. Imagine: in the church house next door on the second floor, children studied, the old people from the city almshouse lived out their lives below, and on Sundays in school there were objects unusual for those years — geography and hygiene. Later, handicraft classes for women were opened here. And in 1902, on the bell tower, built by an elegant five-tiered candle, a chapel was consecrated in honor of the Iberian Icon of the Mother of God.
Then the twentieth century came and the terrible thing began. In 1929, the church was closed: a dormitory for students, a kindergarten in the bell tower, and then an attempted explosion. The domes were dismantled, the bell tower was destroyed, but the building itself survived. For the darkest decades, the former Church of the Intercession was a haven of artists — paintings were painted within these walls, while the walls themselves slowly died.
The second breath opened in 1992. The temple was returned to the faithful in an emergency, disfigured state — three hundred tons of garbage were taken out before the prayer sounded again here. Years later, the bell tower was restored. Today, unlike the old, it is not five, but three tiers, but its spire hovers above the streets as high as it did a century ago.
It’s the living heart of the neighborhood now. Sisters of mercy visit trauma patients, priests spiritually care for schoolchildren and lyceum students. Even the blind have a warm connection here. It seems that the very air in the Intercession Church is saturated with mercy — the very one that did not allow it to disappear.
Charity FundHoly Land.
Russian Temples and Monasteries
