The bells will ring again on the famous flooded bell tower of the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kalyazin, Tver Region. Funds for the restoration of the belfry and the production of four new bells, in addition to the existing two, were raised by a group of concerned citizens and parishioners of the Ascension Church.
According to the project organizers, thanks to six different bells, it will be possible to reproduce any ringing in accordance with the solemnity of the holiday and the talent of the bell ringer.
Kalyazin is 190 km equidistant from Moscow and Tver. It has been known as a small settlement since the 12th century. Lined up on both banks of the Volga. On the one hand there is Makaryevsky Posad, which dates back to the 15th century. The Trinity Makaryev Monastery brought fame to this territory. On the other hand, Nikola’s settlement on Zhabnya. The Nikolo-Zhabensky Monastery was located here. In the 18th century, the monastery was abolished and subsequently the St. Nicholas Cathedral was erected in its place. By the 18th century, both parts became the city of Kalyazin. The bell tower of this St. Nicholas Cathedral is the little that survived when, in the 1936-1940s, during the construction of the Uglich hydroelectric power station and the creation of a reservoir, most of the city’s territory and about forty settlements in the region were flooded. The St. Nicholas Cathedral itself was dismantled, and the 74-meter bell tower was preserved as a lighthouse and landmark for loaded ships passing by – it is at this point that the Volga makes a sharp turn. The bell tower has five tiers, the lower of which is under water. In the 1970s, the structure tilted and they began to talk about its demolition. However, in the end they decided to leave the bell tower as an architectural monument: the foundation was strengthened and an artificial embankment was built at the foot. There are several piers on the river bank, from which excursion boats depart directly to the sunken bell tower. Regular prayer services are held here in the summer.
In addition to the bell tower in Kalyazin, you can see several surviving blocks with buildings from the 18th-19th centuries – from them you can try to imagine what the city looked like before the flooding. The Church of the Ascension of the Lord, built in 1787, has been preserved – a five-domed temple with the facades of the chapels, decorated in the eclectic style with elements of pseudo-Gothic – and the Church of the Vvedenskaya, built in 1882 with the money of the merchant Ivan Okhlobystin. The building of the former Epiphany Church, built in 1781, houses the local history museum. With a tour (by prior arrangement) you can look at the production of the Kalyazin factory of felted shoes – felt boots, to put it simply. Two kilometers from the city center is the estate of the local priest Ivan Stepanovich Belyustin, a spiritual writer-publicist, local historian, and rector of St. Nicholas Cathedral. The house was built in the 1830s and rebuilt at the end of the 19th century. Restoration has been carried out, the interiors have been restored, and a collection of icons is on display.
At the exit from the city in the direction of Uglich, you can see the striking 64-meter radio telescope of the Kalyazin Radio Astronomy Observatory of the Astrospace Center of the Physical Institute named after. P.N. Lebedev Russian Academy of Sciences (KRAO AKTs FIAN),
installed in 2001.
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Author: Elena Novikova-Kitaeva
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