Holy Trinity Cathedral in Vyazma

Cathedral Hill above the Vyazma River is the ancient core of the town, where a fortress stood back in the days of the Vyazma princes; here too rose the main church of Vyazma, replacing a wooden church on the same spot. The cathedral was founded in May 1674 with funds from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and consecrated in September 1676 with three chapels at once — the Trinity, St Nicholas and St Sergius chapels. Vyazma stood on the great road from Moscow to Smolensk, and all the western wars passed through it, so the cathedral burned and was rebuilt more than once: the town suffered especially badly in 1812, when Vyazma burned almost to the ground, and the gutted church stood derelict for several years and was rebuilt with a new four-tier bell tower in the forms of Classicism. In the Soviet period the cathedral was closed in 1929 and returned to believers at the end of 1941; the restoration dragged on from 1974 to 2000. The bell tower holds the silhouette of the whole hill: from the bridge over the river the cathedral is visible in full, from bottom to top. Today it is the cathedral of the Vyazma diocese, and around it survives an old churchyard with gravestones of the century before last.

Address

Нагорный переулок, Вязьма

On the map