Tver, the Ascension Church in Tver: the History and the City-Forming Significance of the Memorial

Abstract

The article presents the results of studying the history and city-forming role of the 18th-century monument – the Ascension Cathedral, located in the center of the main street of Tver (Sovetskaya). After the destruction of several religious buildings in the 1930s, only the Ascension Cathedral remained. It was this building that became the main city-forming element in the central part of the capital of the Upper Volga region in the pre-war years. Still, it should be noted that it played a significant city-forming role in the pre-revolutionary period. The architectural history of the Ascension Cathedral began in the first half of the 1830s when a small stone church was located on this site. Erected in 1749–1751, it was most likely dismantled in the second half of the 1760s during the urban reform of the city based on "regular" planning solutions. Its location in the structure of the "pre-regular" development coincided well with the new urban planning trends. The church building restored after the fire of 1763 preserved the architectural appearance of the Elizabethan-era building for several decades. However, the presence of a small-scale church in the very center of Tver eventually came into conflict not only with the needs of the parish, but also with urban planning expediency, so in the first half of the 1830s, the "small-sized" Baroque building was replaced by a large-scale classicist structure.