Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos (Verkhnyaya Pyshma)

The Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos is the main Orthodox church of Verkhnyaya Pyshma, a satellite town of Yekaterinburg in Sverdlovsk Oblast. The stone church with two altars, built in a Classicist manner, stands on Uspensky Avenue at the entrance to the town from Yekaterinburg. It was built in 1998–2000 with funds from the Uralelectromed copper company.

History

In the late 19th century a wooden chapel appeared in the village of Medny Rudnik, as Verkhnyaya Pyshma was then called. In the early 20th century it was enlarged and given an altar, and on 28 November 1908 it was consecrated to the Dormition of the Theotokos by the dean, Archpriest Kesar Ponomarev, together with the priests Dmitry Vyshegorodsky and Ippolit Belyaev. At first the church belonged to the Trinity parish of the village of Shartash; in 1914 a decree of the Holy Synod made it a parish of its own.

In the spring of 1922, during the campaign to seize church valuables, about 5.7 kg of silver were taken from the church. Services continued until November 1936, when it was closed. The building then housed a library and a propaganda office, later a grocery and a post office; in 1955 it was rebuilt, with the Pioner cinema added on, and nothing of the old church survived.

In the 1990s believers met in a prayer house registered as a parish. In 1997 the management of Uralelectromed decided to build a new stone church in the town. The company's own construction department did the work: the walls, domes and bell tower went up in 1998–1999, and on 29 April 1999 the spire with its cross was set on the bell tower. In July 2000 Archbishop Vikenty of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye consecrated the main altar, and on 23 September that year Patriarch Alexy II visited the church. The left side chapel, dedicated to the Apostle Andrew the First-Called, was consecrated in 2002.

Architecture and interior

The church follows the cross-in-square plan and looks austere yet festive: a drum with windows and a dome rises in the centre among small attics, and a bell tower with a tall spire adjoins the building. The wooden iconostasis was made by the Kanon art and architecture workshop under the architect Grigory Shcherbakov.

In 2002 the walls were painted by graduates and students of the Moscow Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, led by People's Artist of the USSR Ilya Glazunov, with his son Ivan taking part. The dome paintings were prepared in advance by the Moscow artists, while the lower part of the church was painted on site in the traditional way. The icons were painted in the 19th-century Nevyansk manner by a team led by Tatyana Vodicheva. Among the venerated images are the icons of the Mother of God "Quick to Hearken", "Of the Sign" and "Milk-Giver", and icons of St Nicholas and the Great Martyr Panteleimon.

On the church grounds

In 2004 a religious education centre was built next to the church, with a baptismal church dedicated to St Stephen of Perm, a Sunday school, a library, an assembly hall and an arts school. In 2013 a new set of bells, cast by the Pyatkov and Co foundry in Kamensk-Uralsky, was blessed and raised into the bell tower. Since 2019 the church has hosted the preparatory and master's departments of the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary.

Getting there

From Yekaterinburg, drive through the Uralmash district and follow the signs to Verkhnyaya Pyshma: the church is on the right as you enter the town. Suburban buses also run from Yekaterinburg. The church stands a little away from the town centre, so it is quiet here.