Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Goritsy

The Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God stands in the village of Goritsy on the high bank of the Teza, directly opposite neighbouring Dunilovo. The parish here is an ancient one: a church with this dedication is mentioned as early as the 1535 will of Prince Mikhail Gorbaty, and a wooden church was built on its site in 1624. After the Gorbaty family the village belonged to Prince Alexander Shuisky.

The present stone building was put up in 1760-1762 with money from the well-to-do peasant families of the Tsyganovs and the Kholshchevnikovs, and its forms still hold on to the seventeenth century: it is a pillarless church with a refectory and a bell tower attached to it.

The five domes look festive: yellow walls, white window surrounds and a row of kokoshnik gables beneath domes of blue and gold. The brick bell tower with its green tented roof has still not been restored, and the sky shows through its tiers.

The ensemble is completed by the heated Church of the Ascension of 1800 in provincial Classical forms - the whole hill is called Ascension Hill after it - and by the remains of a wall with arched niches. Goritsy together with Dunilovo give a picture rare for central Russia, where two neighbouring villages hold almost ten churches between them.

Address

Шуя — Введенье — Горицы, Введенское сельское поселение

On the map