Epiphany Cathedral (Kazan, Russia)

The Epiphany wooden church was built in the place of the old Prolomny Gate in the 17th century. The adjacent Novaya Sloboda, also known as the Epiphany Sloboda, was built along Prolomnaya Street. The Church of St. Andrew the First-Called was built in 1701 next to the Church of the Epiphany. The stone church of the Epiphany and the belltower were built by merchants Ivan Afanasievich Mikhlyaev and Sergey Alexandrovich Chernov in 1731-1756. In 1741 the church was destroyed by fire and only the walls remained. It is believed that the construction of the stone church began after the fire. The construction of the temple was completed in 1756 with the addition of the refectory to the Epiphany Church, which almost doubled its size. Thus in the 18th century the Epiphany complex was built. It consisted of the main church, a heated winter church named after St. Andrew the First-Called on the northern side, a low two-storey bell tower with a hipped roof on the side of Ostrovsky Street, a clergy house built at the end of the 18th century on the western side and another house of the church on the Bolshaya Prolomnaya Street's side (where nowadays the Chaliapin Monument is situated). In the pre-revolutionary period the Epiphany parish was one of the largest in Kazan. Among its members there were not only ordinary citizens, but also the aristocracy and prominent salesmen. In 1892, Ivan Semyonovich Krivonosov (1810-1892), deputy director of the Kazan City Public Bank, honorary citizen of Kazan merchant of the first guild, died. He bequeathed 35,000 rubles to the Epiphany Church, where he was a lider in 1852-1863. In July 1893, the newspaper "Volzhsky Vestnik" announced a competition for the best design of a new bell tower in the Russian Revival style. It was expected that the project would be about 32 fathoms high. The authorship of the new bell tower is disputed due to the loss of the original design with the author's signature. According to some sources it was the architect Heinrich Rusch, according to others it belonged to the architect and construction manager Mikhail Mikhailov. post-Soviet publications named M. D. Mikhailov as the author of the bell tower project. The Kazan archives have also preserved documents on the dispute between Rush and Mikhailov over the authorship of the project. It was repaired in 1973. In 1995, the Epiphany Cathedral was included in the list of federal historical and cultural heritage of all-Russian significance as a monument of town planning and architecture. The Epiphany Cathedral was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1996-1997. Since then the church holds daily services. The bell tower is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of Tatarstan. It houses the Old Russian Art Exhibition Hall of the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan. In 2001, the Chaliapin Chamber Hall was opened in the bell tower. == Architecture ==

Cathedral The cathedral is at the back of the courtyard. The temple was originally cube-shaped with five domes and three chapels with semicircular vaults. Later, a refectory with a chapter house was added to the main structure. The Epiphany Church was highly decorated before the Revolution. The six tholobates and all three apses of the altar were surrounded by brick armour belts, which extended for tens of meters under the roof of the massive building. The outer walls are decorated with images of saints, while the domes are decorated with gold. The temple was once surrounded by a classical metal fence, complete with a gate and a chapel (which no longer exists). The central tholobate was the only remaining part of the five chapters as in the mid-1990s. However, the domes have since been restored. The interior does not contain any preserved antiquities. The iconostasis and the icons are modern. The temple is not yet been fully restored. Bell tower The bell tower is a tall, tiered structure that stands out on the central street. It is between 62 and 74 meters high, depending on the source. It dominates the surrounding buildings and the historical environment of Kazan. However, the new bell tower of the Epiphany Church was not only built for its intended purpose. On the first floor there is a small room known as the "conversation room" for the Old Believers, as well as a church store. On the second floor there is the church in honor of the discovery of the venerable head of St. John the Baptist. The two-storey square was laid out in a rectangular shape along the street, with two-storey wing volumes topped with faceted turrets over hipped roofs and petal chapels. Turrets with five crosses (partially lost) were located above the eastern and western risaliths of the quatrefoil. Originally, the design included a passage from the street to the Epiphany Church through the first level, which was built during the Soviet period and opened in the 1990s. The temple volume was located above the first level, and a grand staircase in the northern wing led to it. The bell tower has an eight-sided plasticized octagonal column with two tiers of bells. Large arches cut through the column and it is completed with a tinned steel chapter on a faceted tholobate. The decorative style of the building is a skillful combination of ordinary and shaped red brick with white stone composition. It is based on a pictorial combination of modernized Old Russian patterns with geometric forms from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The design features arched openings with keel-shaped cornices, kokoshniki corbel-like decorations and semi-columns with overlapping on the ribs of octagonal, repeated in different versions of the blind arcade. Other interesting facts • In 1854-1862, Archpriest Mikhail Zefirov, a theology professor who later moved to the Imperial Kazan University, served as the church's priest. From 1862 to 1886, he was followed by Evfimiy Alexandrovich Malov, a renowned ethnographer and missionary. Malov was the author of the two-volume work "Historical Description of Kazan Churches" and a linguist who actively participated in the publication of the Quran with a parallel Russian translation. • On February 2, 1873 Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was baptized in the Epiphany Church, according to the metrical book. He was born on February 1. Later Chaliapin sang in the church choir. In 1998 a monument to him was erected near the cathedral. The hotel located in the restored building of the former Sovet Hotel is named after Chaliapin, called "Chaliapin Palace Hotel". == References ==