The Uspensky Sobor, or the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Virgin, (sometimes called the Assumption Cathedral), is the oldest and most historic of the Kremlin Cathedrals. It is the main church of the Kremlin, and is the place where the Russian Princes, Grand Princes and Tsars were crowned. The Metropolitans and Patriarchs were coronated and buried here.
Here is a short historical sketch about how the seat of the Russian orthodox Church moved from Kiev to Moscow:
In 1299, Maksim, the Metropolitan of Kiev moved his seat from Kiev to Vladimir to escape the Tatar menace, thus making Vladimir the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church. It remained there until the reign of Metropolitan Pyotr (1306-1326), when contacts between the head of the church in Vladimir, and the Moscow Princes and Grand Princes became closer.
In 1325-26, Metropolitan Pyotr, (who was canonized in 1339), moved his seat from Vladimir to Moscow, thus making Moscow the ecclesiastical center. In the same year, Ivan I (Kalita) laid the foundation stone of the Cathedral of the Dormition, which was the first Cathedral to be built in the Kremlin. This Cathedral was consecrated on August 4, 1427.
By the 1470s, this first cathedral was falling into a state of disrepair, and Ivan III (the Great) decided to have a new Cathedral built. During the first effort, the unfinished walls of the cathedral collapsed, and in 1475, Ivan III commissioned the Italian Architect Aristotile Fioravanti to build the new one.
Fioravanti studied churches in several of the ancient Golden Ring towns, and patterned the new Cathedral after the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir. After it's completion in 1479, Patriarch Nikon recommended it to be a model for all Russian church architecture. Fioravanti was thrown in prison after asking to return to Italy, and he died there in 1486.
This church has survived almost in it's original form, with only minor alterations after the fire in 1547, and other minor alterations in the mid 17th century.
The cathedral stands on an unusually high base (4 meters or 13 feet), and is built of limestone with brick drums and vaulting. The exterior is remarkably plain like that of the Cathedral in Vladimir.
It is cruciform with a large central dome surrounded by four smaller domes, which shine golden against the blue sky above. These domes symbolize Christ surrounded by the four evangelists.
The Cathedral's rectangular form has portals on three sides, with five low slightly protruberant apses on the eastern side, and three projecting Zakomary or rounded arches above them.
The cathedral is vertically articulated by pilasters with imposts supporting the semicircular arches of the gables.
Decorative features are a horizontal belt of blind arcading puncuated by slit windows, and a series of frescoes added during 1660s beneath the gables on the east and west sides. There are four slit windows under the gables on the south side.
The South side is the main entrance and is decorated with frescoes dating from the sixteenth century, and the west doorway decorated with with frescoes from the 16th c.
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