Church of the Deposition of the Robe, Moscow

April 7, 2006 (Press Release) -- Tucked away behind the mighty Cathedral of the Assumption, stands the diminutive white Church of the Deposition of the Robe, built by craftsmen from the ancient city of Pskov between 1484 and 1486. It was constructed on the site of an earlier church built to commemorate the liberation of Moscow from the Tartars and its name derives from the festival of the deposition of the robe or veil of the Virgin Mary in Constantinople. The Muscovites believed that the robe had saved the city from capture on several occasions and in times of danger it was paraded around the Kremlin walls, just as an icon of the same name was during medieval times. The church served for centuries as the domestic chapel of the Metropolitans and Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church. The church's exterior features elegant, slender pilasters and its apses are decorated with intricate friezes.
Visitors enter by a narrow, covered stairway facing the Cathedral of the Assumption to find a small chapel, dimly lit but decorated with magnificent frescoes painted by Sidor Osipov and Ivan Borisov in 1644, and restored in the 1950s. The interior features depictions of the Adoration of the Magi, scenes from the life of the Virgin and stanzas of the Hymn to the Virgin. The church's pillars are adorned with portraits of some of the greatest Russian leaders and heroes of the Russian Orthodox Church, including Prince Vladimir and Alexander Nevsky.

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