St. John the Baptist Church in Yaroslavl

Interesting facts

The painters could work only in summer, a little over four months a year, and the names of all sixteen are recorded in an inscription on the south wall.

Parishioners donated whatever they had: plots of land, silver ingots, half a shop with its cellar, lace, and entire strings of pearls.

The Tolchkovo parishioners set out to build a church unlike any before, and were the first in Yaroslavl to use moulded ornamental brick, made at two purpose-built kilns.

Deacon Rodion steered the project for more than forty years, keeping the accounts and contracts; he died in 1710 at the age of 83.

The bottom tier of the north and south walls shows the entire calendar of Orthodox saints, a programme considered unique; the west porch illustrates the Apocalypse.

The gallery frescoes tell the Old Testament story from the Creation of the world to the fall of Jericho.

In 1794 the central dome was replaced by an unusual Baroque crown shaped like a huge bowl with toothed edges, topped by a lid and pierced cross.

In the eighteenth century nine bells were cast for the tower, the largest weighing 443 poods, more than seven tonnes.

In 1859 the merchant Fyodor Krasheninnikov paid 10,000 silver roubles to gild every dome and cross of the church.

The interior was photographed in colour in 1911 by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, preserving frescoes that were later damaged during decades of use as a grain store.

Why it is worth it

Fifteen domes, gathered in three clusters above a body of red brick and glazed tile, make the Church of St John the Baptist in Tolchkovo the only fifteen-domed church in Russia. Beside it rises a slender bell tower 45 metres high, as tall as the central dome. From 1997 to 2010 its image appeared on the reverse of the 1,000-rouble banknote.

The church was built between 1671 and 1687 on the bank of the Kotorosl river in Tolchkovo, then the largest and wealthiest quarter of Yaroslavl. Its parishioners paid for it themselves, gathering around 3,000 roubles in money, silver, land and property, and the work was carried out largely by local masons, tile-makers, smiths, carvers and painters. The exterior shows off almost every decorative device of the age: patterned brickwork, carved window surrounds and bands of multicoloured glazed tiles on the walls and drums. The bell tower, of seven tiers, was added in the 1690s.

Inside, the walls are entirely covered with frescoes — more than 1,500 scenes from the life of John the Baptist, the lives of saints and the Bible — painted between June 1694 and July 1695 by a team of sixteen Yaroslavl masters, among them Dmitry Plekhanov and Fyodor Ignatyev. Yaroslavl, founded according to tradition by Yaroslav the Wise in 1010 where the Kotorosl meets the Volga, became Russia's second city in the seventeenth century, and its merchants filled it with stone churches; its historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005. The church now functions as a museum.

Getting there

The church stands on the bank of the Kotorosl in the southern part of Yaroslavl, about 2.3 km from the city centre. Yaroslavl lies about 250 km northeast of Moscow. The nearest airport is Golden Ring Yaroslavl International Airport (IAR), about 19 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

St. John the Baptist Church in Yaroslavl is considered to be the acme of the Yaroslavl school of architecture. It was built during 1671–1687 on the bank of Kotorosl river in the Tolchkovo sloboda (district) which at that time was the largest and wealthiest part of the town.

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St. John the Baptist Church in Yaroslavl

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia