Temple of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. Church of the Holy Trinity in Nikitniki Church of the Holy Trinity in

Art historians call the Church of St. an encyclopedia of marvelous patterns. Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki, built and decorated in the 1630-60s. several generations of the Nikitnikov merchant family. Inside it was painted by the best masters of the Armory: Yakov Kazants, Simon Ushakov, Osip Vladimirov and Gavrila Kondratyev. I talk in detail about the history and external decoration of the temple on. But getting inside to see its magnificent interiors is now very difficult. During Soviet times, the Museum of Architecture and Painting of the 17th Century operated in the church building. (branch of State Historical Museum). But since 2007 it has completely belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate, and since 2012 it has also fallen into the restricted zone of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. The parish allows citizens to enter the upper church either on major church holidays or in groups by prior arrangement for a fee. The FSO allows you to enter the temple through a checkpoint according to the laws known to it. It is only possible to organize a guaranteed visit to Trinity Church in such conditions virtually.

Currently there are 5 chapels in the temple:

St. Life-Giving Trinity	Vmch. Nikita Voina	St. Nicholas the Wonderworker	ap. John the Evangelist	Georgian icon of the Mother of God

The church porch in the form of a hipped locker on massive pillars with hanging white stone weights and a staircase on a creeping arch lead to the western gallery.

Having passed the gallery, we enter the refectory of the main temple through a promising semi-circular portal with massive iron doors and forged bars. The doors are dominated by images of the Sirin bird and a peacock - church symbols of the Christian soul and paradise. But there are also pagan symbols. Those. the doors represent paradise, depicted by folk artists as a fairy-tale world.

In the left corner of the refectory there is a low door to the darkened refectory chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. In the Nikolsky chapel, “The Savior Not Made by Hands” by S.F. has been preserved. Ushakova (1658).

And a straight wide and low semi-circular carved white stone portal leads to the main temple. Above him is Ushakov’s image of the Savior “The Great Bishop” (1657).

On the floor of the hall are slabs of marble-like limestone. Two silver-plated copper chandeliers hang from the ceiling, above which eagles with outstretched wings soar (the royal contribution to the temple).

The hall has 2 wooden open polygonal gazebos with lifting benches inside. Their carved valances with cherubs are supported by turned columns. The lower part is decorated with semi-columns, and the base is a platform with two steps. These are portable choirs that served as places for honored visitors.

The two-light space of the hall is completely covered with a picturesque carpet. The walls, the closed vault and even the window slopes, like a huge illustrated book, present Biblical and Gospel stories and parables in rows in strict sequence. But frescoes on religious themes are painted as cheerful, colorful everyday paintings.

Under the vaults in the walls there are 2 rows of voice boxes (the vaults of the apses are completely filled with them) - burnt pots, located with holes towards the inner surface of the wall. They are needed to suppress the echo or reflection of sound, and not to amplify it.

The main decoration of the temple is an ancient carved 5-tier iconostasis with very durable gilding. It is completed by a row of smooth kokoshniks with eight-pointed crosses, alternating with gilded cherubs. In the upper tiers of the iconostasis: ancestral, prophetic, festive and Deesis (deisis) - icons of the “Stroganov letter”. The icons of the local series were painted by leading masters of the Armory Chamber. To the left of the royal doors is the “Annunciation with Akathist” (12 stamps illustrating songs glorifying the Mother of God), 1659, by Yakov Kazants, Simon Ushakov and Gavrila Kondratyev. The young “flag bearer” Ushakov painted only faces on it. The composition was apparently invented by Kazanets. On the right is the penultimate icon - “The Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles” with the Mother of God in the center of the composition, painted by Osip Vladimirov. The famous Ushakov icon of the Mother of God (“Planting the Tree of the Russian State”), painted for this temple, was transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery. There is a copy of it in the iconostasis. Above the local row, he also painted, using a combination of tempera and oil paints, 9 round medallions with shoulder-length images of teachers of the Universal Church.

In the left wall of the hall in the middle, a high carved white stone rectangular portal leads to the chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. And to the right of the iconostasis is a high white stone five-bladed arch - the entrance to the chapel of the Great Martyr. Nikita Warrior.

Its pre-altar room has well-preserved 17th-century parquet. from thick pine logs. The ancestral row of the miniature 5-tier iconostasis is slightly inclined due to the low arch. The festive tier is unusually filled with icons of the church holidays of the “Colored Triodion” (the period from Easter to Spiritual Day): “Healing of the Paralytic”, “Midbirth”, “Conversation with the Samaritan Woman”, etc. One of the icons - “Healing of the Blind” - was painted by Osip Vladimirov with violation of the canon modeled on the Dutch engraving. In the local ranks there is a revered ancient icon of the Great Martyr. Nikita the Warrior with 14 hagiographic hallmarks.

Here, the family character of the chapel is confirmed by the patronal icon “Our Lady of Gracious Heaven” painted before 1648 with the kneeling venerables George Khezovit and Andrei Kritsky, the namesake organizers of the temple. And in the group portrait of people in secular clothes without halos, according to researchers, the entire Nikitnikov family is depicted.

For the first time in Moscow architecture, the tented bell tower of this church was placed above the northwestern corner of the gallery, connected to the church by a staircase, and a chapel was placed in its basement. John the Theologian.

Its walls are painted with scenes from the Apocalypse in a unique interpretation.

The cellars under the church originally served as warehouses for merchant goods. But in 1904, a lower church with a chapel was built there in the name of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God. Nowadays, worship services are mainly held there.

And photographs were used from the collection of I.F. Barshchevsky and a guidebook published by the temple; works by artists Olga Dremina and Dmitry Suzyumov.

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Photo: Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki

Photo and description

The Church of the Life-Giving Trinity was built in 1628-51. commissioned by the merchant Grigory Nikitnikov on the territory of his estate. Previously, on this site stood the wooden Church of St. Nikita the Martyr in Glinishchi, which burned down in one of the Moscow fires.

The Trinity Church in Nikitniki is an interesting architectural monument in the “Russian pattern” style. This temple subsequently became a model for the construction of many Moscow churches. The slender proportions of the central part of the church are crowned with a five-domed dome, to the base of which are adjacent three rows of kokoshniks. The central head is light.

There are two aisles, northern and southern, adjacent to the northeast and southeast. The northern aisle has a refectory, like the main temple. The tented bell tower is located in the northwestern corner of the temple and is connected to the refectory by a covered gallery - a porch. This entire part of the temple resembles the mansions of ancient Russian wooden architecture. The entrance to the church is decorated with a tented porch. Such “mansion” porches were later added to more ancient churches. The covered gallery and porch, the platbands of the two main windows of the southern facade are reminiscent of the decor of the Kremlin Terem Palace. The southern aisle of the temple was the family tomb of the Nikitnikovs and did not have an entrance from the street, but communicated only with the temple.

The well-preserved multi-colored mural painting of the temple with many everyday details was presumably made by Kremlin masters (Ya. Kazanets, S. Ushakov, etc.), and later became a model for the paintings of churches of the 17th-18th centuries in cities such as Yaroslavl, Rostov, Kostroma and Vologda. These same Kremlin masters later painted icons for the temple iconostasis.

In 1904, the chapel of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God was consecrated in the basement, after which the temple received its second name.

The temple was closed in 1920, and it housed a branch of the State Historical Museum. In 1923, a museum of painting by Simon Ushakov was opened in the church. In 1941-45. The museum was evacuated and reopened after the war only in 1963.

Services have now resumed in the church.

On Sunday I went on an excursion with the Archnadzor around Kitay-Gorod, which fell behind the fence. In essence, it was a small circle around the city, ending at the porch of the Trinity in Nikitniki. Where the most persistent ones went on an excursion to the church.

The Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki was built by Yaroslavl craftsmen in the period from 1631 to 1634 on the site of the wooden church of Nikita the Great Martyr. The wooden church appeared somewhere in the 70s of the 16th century (in 1571 all the earlier buildings burned down due to the visit of Khan Devlet-Girey) and existed until the fire of 1626. From that first church of “Nicetas the Martyr on Glinishchi,” only the temple icon of Nikitas the Great Martyr (1579) has survived. The current building was built by a wealthy Moscow merchant, a native of Yaroslavl, Grigory Leontyevich Nikitnikov, next to his own house. The chapels of Nikolsky, Nikita the Martyr and John the Evangelist (under the bell tower) were immediately built in the church. Later, a chapel of the icon of the Georgian Mother of God appeared in the basement of the temple.

The architecture of the church is the 17th century in all its glory :). I think this style is called patterned. I would call it liberated patterning, because the main feature by which you recognize this style and this time is thoughtfully APPROXIMATE symmetry. There seems to be order, but no one strives for clear uniformity, and no one wants it. This is truly Russian conciliarity through pluralism... ;))
On the excursion we were told that the temple was built not according to a drawing, but according to a drawing by an icon painter (possibly Simon Ushakov). It is the work not of an architect, but of an artist. Here visual images freely grow into one another, without the need for mathematical precision. For example, the halos of saints standing in a dense crowd in paradise become zakomars or gather in groups and form inflorescences of window openings... But saints are people and are all different in their fate, which means the zakomars must be a little different in order to correspond to them.

Here is one window on the right, and the other on the left. There are always two windows, but one is larger, the other is smaller; one is thinner, the other is thicker; one is decorated with carvings like this, and the other like that. And this elongated curved window in the gallery above the porch is actually some kind of Art Nouveau. Most of all it reminds me of Shekhtel next door. I'm just tormented by doubts - is this really the 17th century?

Here is the carving on the window. At first glance, it seems that this is a symmetrical ornament. Nothing of the kind - these are freely wobbling curls, approximately following a certain pattern.

Here is a cinnabar drawing on the walls of the temple. It seems to be repeated, but it is approximately repeated.

Everything inside is covered with 17th century frescoes. You should come by sometime with binoculars and take a closer look. I filmed a little secretly.

The main church has a magnificent carved iconostasis from the 17th century. In the chapel of St. John the Theologian, a taiblo iconostasis (more ancient in design) has been preserved.

In short, before the presidential fence is completed, visit the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. Amazing place.

In the very center of Moscow, a stone's throw from Red Square, almost opposite on Varvarka, stands the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. We have few such amazing churches left, masterpieces of marvelous Russian patterning.

Until recently, it was very easy to get to it - from Vasilyevsky Spusk, go up Varvarka Street and, before reaching Varvarsky Gate Square, turn left into Ipatievsky Lane. You can also walk from the Kitay-Gorod metro station.

Now Ipatievsky has been blocked off with gates and barriers have been installed. Thank God, at least on weekdays from 9 am to 6 pm there is a gap for pedestrians. On weekends and holidays the gates are closed with a sophisticated electronic bolt. And the Old Square is now blocked off with a fence. Fortunately, pedestrians are still allowed on Ilyinka and you can walk to the temple along Nikitnikovsky Lane.

This extraordinary beauty of the church is described in great detail on the temple website. http://www.nikitniki.ru/istoriya. This is a large detailed scientific article. Our story is intended not for the specialist, but for the curious; We will dwell only on the most striking moments of the history and architecture of the temple.

Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. Story

A wooden church probably stood on this site back in the 16th century. The church was called “Holy Martyr Nikita on Glinishchi.” Most likely, it burned down in a fire in 1626. Fires were common in Moscow at that time. An ancient temple icon of the Great Martyr Nikita was taken out of the church engulfed in flames.

A few years later, in 1631-1634, a rich and pious parishioner, Grigory (George) Leontyevich Nikitnikov built the current church in the name of the Life-Giving Trinity. A chapel was built in the temple in the name of the Holy Great Martyr Nikita. Either from this chapel, or from the name of the Nikitnikov homeowners, this place began to be called Nikitniki, and the temple - the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki.

A temple was erected near the large merchant courtyard of the Yaroslavl guest Nikitnikov. The Nikitnikovs got rich in fishing and salt production. At that time, wealth was measured by the size of the courtyard and wealthy residents tried to expand their land holdings. The Niktitnikovs succeeded in this - their yard extended to 37 fathoms in length and 31 fathoms in width. For comparison, let's say that the neighboring church yard occupied an area of ​​11 x 19 fathoms.

The Nikitnikovs' courtyard was rich. Pavel of Aleppo wrote that the merchant's house was not inferior in beauty and spaciousness to the luxurious stone chambers of the royal clerks. In addition to the stone chambers, on their estate there were numerous wooden mansions - a well, a bathhouse, a stable, sheds, barns, and a barnyard. But of all the buildings, only the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity has survived.

In memory of the burnt wooden church, one of the boundaries of the current church was consecrated in honor of the Holy Great Martyr Nikita. Moreover, the saint’s name was similar to the merchant’s surname. It was this chapel that became the ancestral tomb of the temple’s customers. But it is possible that it was not the consonance of names that prompted Nikitnikov to build a limit in the name of this saint. After all, it is Nikita who prays for wealth and prosperity.

Holy Great Martyr Nikita the Warrior. Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki

According to legend, Saint Nikita the Gothic lived on the banks of the Danube in the 4th century. He preached Christianity with all his soul and fought with the pagans. But after the leader of the pagans, Athanaric, came to power, Nikita was captured, tortured and burned in 372. But according to legend, the fire did not scorch the saint’s body, and Athanaric forbade his body to be buried. But a pious Christian, a friend of the saint, Marian, hid and buried the body of Saint Nikita in his house. And the house of Marian became rich and prosperous. And those houses where they keep the icon of the Great Martyr Nikita, venerate and pray to the saint, increase in abundance and wealth. The Nikitnikovs strove for well-being and, probably for this reason, built a chapel of the saint in the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity. And so it happened, although the temple was considered a parish, it primarily glorified and perpetuated the customer’s family.

Shrines of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki

Icon of the Georgian Mother of God

Initially, the image of the Georgian Mother of God was in Georgia. In 1622, during one of Shah Abbas's raids on Georgia, the Persians captured many Orthodox shrines in the hope of selling them to Russian merchants. Their hopes came true. In 1629, the clerk of the Yaroslavl guest Yegor (Georgy) Lytkin, Stefan Lazarev, was offered an image of the Virgin Mary, strewn with pearls and studded with precious stones. Around the same time, Yegor Lytkin received a notification in a dream that a precious bead had been purchased for him and an order to send it as a gift to Black Mountain. When Lazarev brought the image of the Virgin Mary to the owner, the merchant understood what kind of beads he was talking about in his night vision. With the advice and blessing of Patriarch Philaret, in 1629 the priceless image of the Mother of God was sent to the monastery on Black Mountain in Pinega, Arkhangelsk region. In the same year, the monastery began to be called not Montenegrin, but Krasnogorsk, and the icon of the Mother of God - Georgian, after its original location.

In 1654, when the plague was raging in Moscow, a miraculous monastery was brought from the Montenegrin monastery to the Trinity Church. icon of the Georgian Mother of God and many who prayed before this image were healed. Before returning the icon to the monastery, a list was made of it and left in the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. Since then, many Muscovites have called the temple in Nikitniki the Church of the Georgian Mother of God. And in 1904, in the basement of the church, a chapel was consecrated in honor of this image.

The icon not only became famous for its numerous miracles of healing, but during Soviet times it saved the temple from destruction. They say that when the “leader of the peoples” learned that the temple was consecrated in honor of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God, he said: “A very correct name.” And the temple was not destroyed.

Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God “Planting the Tree of the Russian State”

It is curious that an attempt to demolish the temple was made in .... 1871. To expand the construction of business buildings, the space occupied by the temple was needed. Then the Moscow Imperial Archaeological Society stood up for the church and prevented demolition.
Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God “Planting the Tree of the Russian State”- another particularly revered icon of the temple. In the temple there is a copy of the image painted by Simon Ushakov. The original is kept in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery.

The iconography of the image is intended to glorify the Great Intercessor and Patroness of the Russian land. The Tree of the State of Moscow was planted by God's providence by the collector of Russian lands, Ivan Danilovich Kalita, and the Moscow Metropolitan Peter nurtured and watered the vine. The Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin became fertile ground. On the Kremlin wall stand: on the left is Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, on the right is Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna with the princes - the elder Alexei Alekseevich (died at 16 years old) and the younger Fedor Alekseevich, the future third sovereign of the Romanov dynasty.

The medallions on the branches of the tree depict saints, noble princes, blessed ones and saints of Ancient Rus'.

Another especially revered image of the Kazan (Tobolsk) Mother of God is also kept in the church.

Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki and Simon Ushakov

In 1923, a museum of the painter Simon Ushakov was opened in the temple. The famous isographer painted several icons for the temple in 1657-58. Next to the temple, opposite the church in Ipatievsky Lane, there are chambers of the 17th century, they are usually called the chambers of Simon Ushakov.

The famous Moscow local historian Sergei Romanyuk thinks differently. “However, they did not belong to him: when it was necessary to save the rarest building of the chambers from vandals, the zealots of our history resorted to lies to save themselves. They named these chambers after the famous artist in order to give additional weight to their arguments and thus save them,” writes Romanyuk in the book “China Town”.

The temple website reports that the name of Simon Ushakov and his relatives is recorded in the synod of the church, which gives reason to think that the famous royal iconographer lived in the parish of the Nikitnikov Church. There is information that Simon Ushakov was a homeowner until 1668. The icon painter’s petition has been preserved, in which he says: “But my yard is small and in the mud in Kitai-Gorod and there is nowhere to build mansions for icon painting and for students.” His request was respected and S. Ushakov moved to Posolskaya Street.

Architecture of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki

“Moscow-Russian” style” is how experts define the architectural character of the church.
Architectural historian N.V. Sultanov defines the features of this style as follows:

“With the help of the technical knowledge of Western architects and those eastern and Byzantine artistic elements that were at hand, as well as both of their own, Muscovite Rus' creates that peculiar and bizarre architecture, which is known as “Moscow”. This Muscovite-Russian style reaches its greatest, although far from complete, development in the 16th and 17th centuries. and presents us with examples of independent Russian art.”

Professor Sultanov calls the most striking examples of the Moscow-Russian style the Intercession Cathedral (St. Basil's Cathedral), the Dyakovskaya Church, the Church of the Georgian Mother of God and the Trinity Church in the village of Ostankino.

The Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki is very similar to a wooden tower building. Its facade is not at all correct, but consists of separate parts. The quadrangle of the temple is surrounded on all sides by various buildings - from the east - the altar, from the west - the bell tower and porch, from the north - the refectory with the chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, and from the southeast there is a separate chapel of St. Nikita the Martyr. The entire church stands on a high basement and this makes it look even more like a wooden mansion.

Plan of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki

The temple is asymmetrical and is perceived differently from different points of view. If we approach it from the west, from Ipatievsky Lane, then all its parts unfold before us - the high quadrangle and the sprawling refectory, and the bell tower and the surprisingly light tent of the porch.

And from Nikitsky Lane the temple looks like a slender fairy-tale tower, with a five-domed tower on high drums. There is only one light drum, the central one.

Anyone who is familiar with the stone churches of Yaroslavl will certainly see some similarities in the details of the decoration of Yaroslavl churches and the temple in Nikitniki. In Yaroslavl, in the Nikolo-Nadeinsky Church, the bell tower also stands above the northwestern corner of the gallery. And the carved ornament on the western portal is very similar to the carving of the wooden vestibule of the Yaroslavl Church of Elijah the Prophet. Probably, Yaroslavl stone craftsmen took part in the construction of the church. Grigory Nikitnikov himself was a Yaroslavl guest and could well have invited his fellow countrymen.

The white stone pattern of the temple is balanced and not at all overloaded; it leaves a feeling of integrity. But the character of the white stone parts is striking in their diversity. Platbands with bolsters, flies with colored tiles and kokoshniks amaze with their variety of shapes and are almost never repeated.

Such magnificent decoration of the temple makes it look more like a civil building. Another “secular” feature in the architecture of the temple is its windows.

They vary in size and are unevenly spaced. This is explained by the different purposes of the interior spaces.

The decoration of the portals and windows of the southern facade is very reminiscent of the decor of the Terem Palace of the Kremlin. Most likely, along with Yaroslavl architects, royal craftsmen also participated in the construction of the Nikitnikov Church. The architect L.V. Dal even assumed that such an intricate look was given to the temple not by the builder, but by the icon painter, Simon Ushakov himself.
The white stone lace of the upper tiers is complemented by colored tiles, probably the work of Belarusian craftsmen.
I would like to pay special attention to the main entrance, topped with a hipped porch. It is decorated with double arches with carved white stone weights.

The porch is extended towards the street and, as it were, invites the visitor to come inside and admire the temple.

Interior decoration of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki

We go up to the high porch and find ourselves inside the refectory. A wide arch on the right leads to the main temple. A small door on the left leads to the St. Nicholas Chapel.
In the main church of the Life-Giving Trinity, the painting was done with oil paint on top of the frescoes. The themes of the paintings are Gospel events and parables of Christ.

Golosniki

Under the arches of the temple there are voice boxes. Golosniks are pots made of baked clay. When building a church, they are specially embedded in the brick thickness of the wall with holes inside the church. It is believed that voice boxes are necessary to amplify the sound inside the temple. But the Russian architect Lev Vladimirovich Dal (1834-1878) argued that, first of all, voice boxes are needed to destroy the echo. When a sound wave rises, the voices detain it and crush it with their holes.

The iconostasis of the temple is magnificent. It is not quite ordinary, not 5, but 6 tiers, from the middle of the 17th century. Half-columns of elegant design cover the places where the icons touch. The iconostasis is covered with such durable gilding that its composition surprises even specialists. The carving of the lower part of the iconostasis differs from the upper. Most likely, it was completed a little later.

In the local row of the iconostasis there are icons of Stroganov writing, they were made by masters of the Armory Chamber. Yakov Kazanets, Simon Ushakov and Gavrila Kondratyev painted the icon “Annunciation with Akathist”. The same famous Simon Ushakov created the images of Our Lady of Vladimir “Planting the Tree of the Russian State” and “The Great Bishop”. In the name of Saint John the Evangelist

Services in the temple resumed in 2004, and in 2007 the church was officially returned to the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Trinity Church in Nikitniki makes the same impression as if you opened a shell and found a pearl of rare beauty. After all, it is surrounded by modern “nothing” buildings and because of this, its amazing beauty, its decoration fascinates and delights. The white stone carving is so elegant that it seems as if it is made of the lightest lace and woven from silk. The temple is very joyful, it’s as if it’s all moving upward, carrying you along with it, and you and the kokoshniks are moving upward! And then, approaching the wide gallery, you calm down a little, looking at the arched windows of different rhythms and patterns. It’s as if the church itself leads the viewer to the bell tower, solid, as if rooted in the ground, and again – the same upward impulse.

On duty, I often go up to the temple and show it to tourists. I love watching how people’s mood changes when they see this architectural miracle of ancient Russian architects. No matter how indifferent a person was, no matter how calmly he treated architecture, when approaching the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki, no one ever did without an enthusiastic exclamation: “Ah!” and did not leave without the vivid impression that this temple makes.

The Church of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki (Church of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God on Varvarka) is an example of Moscow pattern design of the mid-17th century, built by Yaroslavl merchants in Kitay-Gorod. This building is a milestone in the history of Russian architecture; it served as a model for many Moscow churches in the second half of the 17th century.

In the direction of Ilyinka from Varvarka, Ipatievsky Lane, now closed to “outsiders,” stretches with the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Nikitniki. This place was not built up for a long time and was called “Glinishchi” because of the clay soil.

By royal decree, in 1622, the successful Yaroslavl merchant Grigory Leontyevich Nikitnikov came to Moscow and settled in Kitai-Gorod. Next to his courtyard there was a wooden church of the Holy Martyr Nikita on Glinishchi, which burned down in 1626. But a local temple icon of the second half of the 16th century has been preserved with the image of the martyr Nikita of Gotha in military attire and his life.

St. Nikita received baptism from Bishop Theophilus, a participant in the First Ecumenical Council. Together with the famous Wulfila, he participated in the spread of Christianity among the Goths and fought in the troops of the leader Fritigern against the persecutor of Christians Athanaric.

After Athanaric returned to power, Nikita was subjected to torture and executed by burning in 372. According to the life, the fire did not burn the body of the martyr. A certain righteous man and friend of Nikita, Marian, first hid and then buried his body in his house, for which wealth was sent to his house.

There was also a belief that every house in which the memory of Nikita the warrior was honored would receive wealth and abundance. It can be assumed that such a legend attracted Grigory Nikitnikov. And his “surname” was consonant with the name of the saint. Therefore, the origin of the name “Nikitniki” can be interpreted in two ways, either from the ancient church, or from the name of the owner of the estate.

But be that as it may, in 1628-1634. At the expense of this merchant Nikitnikov, a new one in stone was built on the site of a burnt wooden church, which has come down to us in its original form.

One chapel of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity, in the basement, was consecrated in the name of the icon of the Georgian Mother of God, which is why the church is sometimes called the Church of the Georgian Mother of God.

The image of the Georgian icon was considered miraculous. He was credited with the miracle of delivering Moscow from a pestilence in 1654. This was a list of icons that the Persian Shah Abbas, who conquered Georgia in 1622, sold to Russian merchants. The original icon is located in the Krasnogorsk monastery on Pinega.

During Soviet times, the temple was transferred to the State Historical Museum. In 1923-41. The Simon Ushakov Museum operated here, and since 1963, the Museum of Old Russian Painting. In 1991, it was decided to return the church to believers; now services are held in the basement of the temple. The museum is closed.

Literally opposite the entrance to the temple is the entrance to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, namely V.V. Putin. Therefore, this temple is sometimes called “presidential”. There is a belief that the employees of the Department spend part of their working day in this church, and since they cannot have their own sins, they pray for us, sinners, mired in vices.

Next to the temple there is house No. 12 on Ipatievsky Lane. The right structure of this house is directly related to the Nikitnikov Church. These are ancient chambers built in the mid-17th century, an example of stone residential buildings, which gradually began to displace wooden houses in Moscow.

In 1670 the chambers were given over to the workshops of Simon Ushakov, one of the first Russian painters. It was his name that saved the ancient chambers from destruction in Soviet times.

Simon Ushakov is an iconic figure in the history of Russian painting. Originally from the townspeople, in 1648. entered the royal service in the Silver Chamber, where he worked as a “banner bearer,” that is, he composed designs for decorating utensils and jewelry, as well as designs for banners, geographical maps, embroidery and church vestments.

Gradually he gained great authority at the court of Alexei Mikhailovich. The Ushakovo workshop painted icons and frescoes for the Arkhangelsk and Assumption Cathedrals of the Kremlin, and the Trinity Church in Nikitniki. Ushakov is considered to be the founder of Russian painting.

Before him, only icons were painted in Rus', but Ushakov began to paint portraits of secular people, the so-called parsuns - a transitional genre between icon painting and secular portraiture. They are still drawn on boards, reminiscent of holy faces, but rich chiaroscuro already appears, a technique that Simon Ushakov adopted from Italian masters.

Well, now the Federal Treasury is located here, which controls operations with federal budget funds and carefully monitors its fair distribution.

To get to the temple, you just need to go through the security of the presidential administration. It’s not difficult to do this, you just have to shout into the phone something like: “The electorate is eating! Where will he go? Well, at least give me two trillion!” Or maybe they’ll let me in anyway.

On a protected area in Nikolsky Lane there is another temple - the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker “Red Bell”. The name comes from the beautiful ringing of the temple's bells, which included a bell from 1573, supposedly taken by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich as a trophy during the Polish War.

The temple was famous for the fact that the head of Alexei Sokovnin, the head of the Konyushenny Prikaz, who in 1697 participated in a conspiracy against Peter I and was quartered for this on Bolotnaya Square, was buried next to its altar. His relatives demanded the remains, but they had already been sent by the authorities to a “poor house”, so only the severed head was buried with honors.

Having already reached Varvarka, we noticed a group of employees settling down for a lunch break. I still don’t understand which department they work for.

Fais se que dois adviegne que peut.