The Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior,Staroyarmarochny Cathedral — the only structure from the original yarmarka buildings to have survived to the present day.
History of the Cathedral
Built in 1822 to a design by A. A. Betancourt. The remarkable resemblance between the yarmarka church and Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg is no coincidence: the facades of both churches were designed by the same man — Auguste R. de Montferrand. Unfortunately, the interior frescoes by Academician A. V. Stupin have not survived.
Nizhny Novgorod residents of Nizhny Novgorod and visiting merchants called the cathedral the Spassky Cathedral because, even before the church was built on the spit at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga River, the clergy of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral had set up an iconostasis in a canvas tent among the trading stalls in temporary plank booths.
The icons and church vessels were brought from the cathedral in the Kremlin, and the priests came from there as well. Since the yarmarka lasted only a month and maintaining a dedicated yarmarka clergy was not economical, the church was attached to the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral in the Kremlin. For this reason the yarmarka church came to be known as the Spassky Church, and later, when the church in honor of Alexander Nevsky was built, as the Staroyarmarochny (Old Yarmarka) Cathedral.
Soon after the new church was consecrated, it emerged that many merchants refused to attend, as they were uncomfortable praying before icons painted in the European manner by the Italian artist Torricelli. The figures of saints in the images had exposed parts of their bodies, which caused bewilderment and incomprehension among the traders.
Some of them began coming to the church with their own icons, which they brought carefully wrapped in cloth. A few years later the icons were replaced. The new iconostasis was designed by architect V. Stasov.
The church was built on rather unstable ground; floodwaters gradually eroded the fill, and dangerous cracks appeared in the cathedral's walls. At the end of the nineteenth century, Robert Yakovlevich Kilevein restored the Staroyarmarochny Cathedral. The church was re-consecrated on July 31, 1888.
As a result of the numerous repairs and restorations carried out during the nineteenth century, the cathedral's appearance changed considerably. The iconostases have not survived, and the paintings on the walls and vaults remain only on a small area. In the twentieth century the church served as a warehouse, while the administrative building housed residential apartments. The Spassky Staroyarmarochny Cathedral was returned to the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese in 1991.