Tobolsk — key to Siberia
Peter and Paul Church
The first wooden Peter and Paul Church was built no later than 1652. On June 1, 1701, the church burned down, and in 1703 it was restored. The church stood until 1765, then died in a fire. Instead, a wooden Baptist Church was transported from the village of the Ioanno-Vvedensky Monastery, laid in the same place and consecrated on June 18, 1765. The temple did not last long – it was temporary. Then, on September 17, 1768, a stone church was laid in the name of the Apostles Peter and Paul, with the side-chapels of Alexy, Metropolitan of Moscow and the Monk Nil Stolbensky.
On August 10, 1774, the side-chapel of St. Alexis was consecrated, on December 7 of the same year – Nil Stolbensky. After 1807 the bell tower was erected.
In the 1930s. the church lost its crosses and a fence; inside the church, a wooden ceiling was installed above the first tier. Work has been underway to bring the church back to its original form since the beginning of 1990.
Alexander chapel
Located in Nizhny Posad, the Alexander Chapel is entirely connected with the House of Romanovs.
Mother of God Christmas (Ilinskaya) Church
Until 1764 the temple was not a parish: it belonged to the Mother of God-Assumption Convent.
The Tobolsk Monastery was founded in 1599 on the left bank of the Irtysh River, near the old mouth of the Tobol. Due to frequent floods, the monastery under Archimandrite Methodius was moved to the Upper Posad and placed behind the Resurrection Gate. The main temple of the monastery was the Church of the Assumption of the Most Holy Theotokos.
Church of Zechariah and Elizabeth
The wooden Zakharievskaya church was built in 1752. Metropolitan Sylvester ordered to build it on the site bought from the Tatars by the peasant M. Mukhin. In a fire in 1757, the church burned down, and a two-story stone church with six altarpieces was laid in its place. The church took almost twenty years to build and was fully completed in 1776. The work was supervised by the master Andrey Gorodnichev. The heads of the temple were gilded “through the fire” at the expense of the Tobolsk merchant Nevolin.
Church of the Savior
The wooden Church of the Savior was built back in 1587 after the construction of the first prison and the construction of the first church – Trinity. In 1593, the exiled Uglichsky bell was raised on the bell tower of this church, which heralded the people about the murder of the young Tsarevich Dmitry.
Church of St. Andrew the First-Called
The wooden Apostle-Andreevskaya Church was built in 1646, and in 1744 the merchant Avraamy Sumkin put a small stone “frame” in its place. The stone craftsman Cornelius Perevoloku is called the builder of the church. In 1749, the chapel was consecrated in the name of Abraham the Recluse, and in 1755 in the name of St. Andrew the First-Called. In 1759, the refectory was completed and the third throne was consecrated in the name of John the Warrior. A procession with the icon of the Pochaev Mother of God took place in the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called.
Church of St. Michael the Archangel
It was built at the expense of the parishioners to replace the wooden church in 1745. The lower warm church in honor of John the Theologian was consecrated in 1749, the upper summer one – in 1749. The entire building was completed in 1759. Three decades later, on the north side of the temple, a side-chapel was built in the name of the Three Ecumenical Teachers and Saints. In the 1930s. the bell tower was dismantled. The church housed the Khudozhestvenny cinema. In the second half of the 1980s. the temple was restored in its former form.
The church was built following the example of the churches of the Russian North, as a closed gallery staircase leads to the second floor. The church is especially attractive due to its extended stone fence with a metal openwork lattice-monogram “M-A” (Michael the Archangel), made in the forms characteristic of the Elizabethan Baroque.
Holy Cross Church
The wooden church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was built back in 1652, in 1743 it burned down, but was immediately rebuilt. Ten years later, to the south-west of the wooden church, at the expense of parishioners, they began to build a two-story stone church. The stone church was founded to replace the wooden church in 1754. Merchants brothers Medvedev on the bank of the Pokrovka river poured a hill to build a house, then donated the hill to build a church. The temple was built at the expense of the parishioners. The lower warm temple in honor of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos was consecrated in 1761, and the upper cold (summer) one – in 1771. Due to the lack of money, the bell tower stood for many years made of wood and only in 1784 was it finished with a stone one. In 1798 the construction was completed.
Church of the Seven Youths
In 1772 a new cemetery was opened in Tobolsk behind the Zemlyanoy Val. It was ordered for the first time to build a small wooden church here. On October 11, 1774, Archbishop Varlaam (Petrov) blessed the foundation of the wooden church of the Seven Youths of Ephesus. And a little later, on October 22, she was consecrated. Initially, there was no specific priest in the wooden church. By order of the Tobolsk spiritual consistory, on October 29, 1774, the priests of the Trinity, Epiphany, Annunciation, Arkhangelsk, Khrstorozhdestvenskaya, Sretenskaya, Holy Cross Exaltation were ordered to alternately serve in the cemetery church.
NIkolskaya (Vvedenskaya) church.
The first St. Nicholas Church was built in 1602 for 10 days, on the occasion of the appearance of St. Nicholas and to stop the loss of cattle in the city. On May 29, 1677, the church was destroyed in a fire caused by a lightning strike in the Znamensky Monastery. In the next year, 1678, a new wooden church was laid for St. Nicholas, Bishop of Mirlikia, with the chapel of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki. The new temple was consecrated on December 3, 1680.
Tobolsk Znamensky Monastery.
Tobolsk Znamensky Monastery is the oldest monastery in Siberia. It was founded according to some sources in 1595 according to others in 1599. Initially, the monastery was located on the left bank of the Irtysh, opposite the old mouth of the Tobol. The founders of the monastery can be considered monks from the Russian north, since the main church of the monastery was consecrated in the name of Zosima and Savvaty of the Solovetsky saints. The initial number of the brethren was small, but not only men, but also women came here to pursue asceticism. By the beginning of the 17th century. the monastery grew so much that the village of Yurovskaya with all the lands was donated to the monastery.
History of the Transfiguration Church.
The Transfiguration Church is the only one made in the spirit of classicism. It was located on the northern outskirts of Tobolsk in the Bishop’s Grove. Here was the bishop’s summer dacha, founded in the middle of the 18th century.
The renovation of buildings in the Bishop’s Grove took place under Bishop Vladimir (Alyavdin) of Tobolsk and Siberia. The stone church was laid in the spring of 1845.
The Church of the Holy Trinity is the center of the national identity of the Poles in the Tobolsk province.
The main center of the national identity of the Poles of the Tobolsk province, and above all of Tobolsk itself, was the church. Here the Polish speech was heard, weddings, baptism of children were performed. There was a library of Polish books at the church
Mosque
The first stone building of the mosque in Tobolsk was built in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. on the initiative of the outstanding figure of Siberian Tatar culture, merchant of the 2nd guild Tukhtasyn-khadzhi Safaraleevich Aitmukhametov. Aitmukhametov, the official of the Tobolsk City Duma, one of the founders and treasurer of the society of Muslim progressives, opened and maintained a Tatar school at his own expense. At his insistence, the logs of the old wooden mosque were used to construct a new school building. In place of the wooden one in 1895-1900, a new stone mosque with a minaret was built in Nizhny Posad. The construction was supervised by Maksum Bekshenev. In 1930 the mosque was closed. It was restored in 1900. The design work on its restoration was carried out by the great-granddaughter of the patron Svetlana Chetkareva.
Annunciation Church (not preserved)
The Annunciation stone church was erected on the site of an old wooden church built in the 17th century. immigrants from Veliky Ustyug. After the abolition of the Peter’s decree prohibiting stone construction in Russia, it turned out to be one of the first parish churches in Tobolsk, which was founded in 1735. In 1748, the chapels of the church were built and consecrated: St. Procopius and John of the Ustyug miracle workers and Catherine, and only ten years later (in 1758) the church itself was consecrated. But it remained with a wooden porch and a wooden bell tower.
Sophia Cathedral of the Assumption
Sophia Cathedral of the Assumption – the first stone church in Siberia, the earliest stone building of the Sophia courtyard in the city of Tobolsk.
The first wooden church dedicated to Sophia – the Wisdom of God, was built in 1621 in connection with the opening of the Siberian Diocese by the decree of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. The first temple was destroyed by a fire in 1643. Five years later, a new St. Sophia Cathedral was built on the same site, surrounded by twelve aisles. The permission for its construction was obtained by the Tobolsk Metropolitan Pavel the First. The cathedral was built by Gerasim Sharypin and Gavrila Tyutin (with the participation of Vasily Larionov) on the model of the Ascension Church in Moscow.
Sophia Cathedral of the Assumption is a cubic five-domed temple 47 meters high, one-story with two tiers of windows, decorated with platbands in the form of kokoshniks. The cathedral was built according to the type of cross-domed churches that were widespread in Russia in the X-XII centuries. At this time, such churches were no longer built and therefore the St. Sophia Cathedral of the Assumption is a unique structure of the late 17th century.
The restoration work in the church was completely finished only in 2011, when the painting of the walls of the cathedral was created by Moscow masters.
At present, the Sophia-Assumption Cathedral is the main temple of the diocese (here is the chair of Metropolitan Demetrius of Tobolsk and Tyumen).
Cathedral of the Intercession
In 1743, the winter Intercession Cathedral was laid. Its construction was caused by the fact that the St. Sophia Cathedral of the Dormition was not heated and it was impossible to hold services there in winter. It took three years to build the Intercession Cathedral and it was consecrated in the name of Anthony and Theodosius – the miracle workers of the Caves. In 1860, the building was expanded, and in 1867, at the expense of the merchant Nevolin, a side-altar was added on the north side, and the cathedral itself was renamed Pokrovsky. Among the Tobolsk monuments, the Intercession Cathedral is unique in its fully preserved décor.