Moscow Guide
Zamoskvareche and the south
The Church of the Ascension
Address: Beyond Kolomenskoe Front Gate
The primeval grandeur of the soaring Church of the Ascension (tserkov Vozneseniya) rivals that of St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square. Though the two buildings look very different, they are related in that this church was commissioned by Vasily III in 1529 as a votive offering in the hope that he be granted an heir, who as Ivan the Terrible would later decree the creation of St Basil's; this feeling of ancestral kinship is almost palpable.
Aside from this, what makes the Ascension Church so remarkable is its stupendous tent-roof. Rising from an octagonal base culminating in tiers of kokoshniki resembling giant artichoke leaves, its facets are enhanced by limestone ribbing and rhomboid patterns, while a lantern, cupola and cross bring the total height to 70m. This was such a radical departure from the domed stone churches that then prevailed, that architectural historians decided it must have sprung from the separate tradition of wooden tower churches, until new evidence that the Italian Petrok Maly had supervised its design led some to argue that it represented a late development of the Romanesque pyramid-roofed tower.