The main part of the
present architectural complex concerns 1880ths when archbishop
Nikita reconstructed the residence anew. These are bishop’s
and seminary buildings.
They are located in parallel to each other and form the basic rectangular
of the monastery from the east and the west.
The majority
of buildings lost their initial shape as a result of following
alterations.
The most ancient is the
construction in northern part of the monastery. It is a small two-storied
house in an empire style made of brick and plastered (Hegumene’s
House nowadays).
In the XVII century
the church in honour of the Protection Veil of the Holy Mother of God was
placed in this building. Warm, one-headed, non-apsidal church with a
refectory occupied the top floor; the
crypt served economic purposes. The
church had a board vestibule and a gallery that connected it with bishop’s
rooms. The head and the roof of the church were covered with tile, floors
were covered by brick. Rooms of the church are easily read on plans of the
existing building. Stoves
and old doorways are
visible on the walls, residues of cut down trowels – on the
facades. In the beginning of the XIX century the Protection Veil of the
Holy Mother of God church was transferred to the Bishop’s House and now
adjoins to it from the end face.
The
Holy Trinity church is the main church of the
convent. It was built in 1680 in a Moscow baroque style and was repeatedly
altered subsequently. This church is non-pillar, one-headed, put on a high
vaulted crypt. The church is interesting by original structure where
central cube
with 2 windows and a close vault is
surrounded from three sides by the gallery included in a volume of its
lower storey. The gallery is connected with the church by means of big
arch apertures – and all this complicates internal space.
A passage connected the Holy Trinity church with
the Bishop’s House. It
is known, that some icons for the church were painted by masters of the
Armory Chamber, Tikhon Philantyev being one of them.
The
Bishop’s House was built at the end of 1682 on
archbishop Nikity’s initiative at the place of a former Bishop’s Palace.
Renewed after a fire in 1777, it received forms of an early classicism. In
1823 small warm St. Sergius’s (Intercession) church was attached to its
northern end face. That brought in new features of a pseudo-Gothic style
to the monument architecture. Despite of alterations, the brick
two-storied living building kept primary internal structure, the most part
of vaulted floors and trowel-partitioning of facades, adequate to position
of internal walls. The facade facing the conventual yard has obvious
traces of reconstruction of the late XVIII century. Its windows are
increased and placed in flat ambries with superimposed decorative "board",
the interfloor belt is cut down, the wall is finished with a classical
eaves with trusses.
Some
specialists consider the Cross-vaulting (One-pillar) Chamber of the
Bishop’s House to be a building of the XVI century.
On October
14, 1775 Empress Catherine II visited Kolomna. Passing along Kolomna she
noticed, that the town was disregarded and built chaotically up. The
instruction was given to the local authorities to put the town into an
order. Empress sent from Moscow a group of architects headed by the
well-known architect Matthew Fedorovich Kazakov in January, 1778. He
restored the Bishop’s House damaged after a fire of 1778, and also built a
stone fencing with a gate of an arrow-shaped form, angular towers topped
with high-spike domes, and reconstructed the
Protecting Veil of the Holy Mother of God (Intercession)
church which became a typical
sample of the architect’s (M.F.Kazakov) synthesis of classical and
pseudo-Gothic architectural forms.
Attached to
the church a one-pillar refectory led to the next bishop’s reception
chamber, that was later included into the structure of the brethren
building.
The tree-storied
belltower with the Holy gate in the basis is one of the best examples of
an empire style in Kolomna. It was made of brick with partial application
of white stone in 1825. Massive, partly rusticated
cube of the first storey
with an archway carries a harmonious tower with two bell-storeys and a
dome drum. Column porticoes
and a motive of false balustrade make it look elegant and
trim.
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