🏛 Rogozhskaya Sloboda: Intercession Cathedral and Bell Tower

ул. Рогожский Посёлок, 29

An Old Believer ensemble with the Neoclassical Intercession Cathedral and a tall white bell tower of the early 20th century.

The sloboda arose in the late 16th century: coachmen who carried the tsar's mail to the Rogozhsky Yam, now Noginsk, settled here.
The Old Believer cemetery was established in 1771 for those who died of the plague; Old Believer merchants then ran their own hospitals.
The Intercession Cathedral of 1790–1792 is attributed to Matvey Kazakov; by area it exceeded the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin.
By decree of Catherine II the cathedral was "shortened": of five domes one was left, and the altar projections were dismantled.
The collection's most famous icon was "The Saviour with the Fierce Eye"; the cathedral holds icons from the Rakhmanov and Soldatyonkov collections.
The bell-tower church was built in 1912–1913 in memory of the unsealing of the Old Believers' altars.
Legend says the bell tower was allowed to be just a meter lower than Ivan the Great; it was never measured exactly, but it is over 80 meters.
The bell tower's facade is decorated with reliefs of birds of paradise and a pelican feeding its chicks with its blood.