the door of the Resurrection or door of Iber

the door of the Resurrection or door of Iber

In the center of the capital, next to the Red Square, stands an architectural building of incredible beauty. Picturesque doors appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century, were destroyed in the early 1930s and restored in the late twentieth century. Today, there is a popular pedestrian zone. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists pass under powerful stone arches and take pictures against the backdrop of the Resurrection Gate.

The history of the construction of the famous door.

The double doors appeared in 1535 and became part of a brick wall that extended more than 2.5 km around Kitai Gorod. The construction of a powerful fortification took place at a time when the mother of John the Terrible, Elena Glinsky, ruled Russia. And the construction of the fortification was carried out by the Italian architect and fortification expert Petrok Malaya, nicknamed Fryazin.

At first, the two arches in the brick wall had no overhangs. The two-story towers on them appeared after almost a century and a half. Then, two pointed towers were decorated with double-headed eagles covered in gold.

Why the doors were called differently

The double passage on the wall of Kitai Gorod had different names. This is reflected in written documents and urban plans. During the reign of John IV the Terrible, the section of the fortification ditch between Sobakina and the Nikolskaya towers was not filled with water. There they kept cages with lions, which the Russian Tsar received as a gift from England. The townspeople came to watch extravagant animals and for a long time knocked on the door “Lions.”

There was a time when the doors of the nearby church were called “Epiphany.” Under the father of Peter I, the Trinity Compound was nearby, and the doors were called the “Trinity.” Until the 1920s, there was a stone bridge that connected the two banks of the Neglinnaya River. Thanks to him, the doors were called “Neglimenskie”.

Resurrection Gate in Moscow

In the history of the ancient door, an unusual name has also been preserved: “Kuretnye”. There was once near the Kremlin the bird yard of the Kuretny Chamber, which was responsible for delivering the freshest chicken meat to the palace of the Russian tsars. The chickens in those days were called “chicken,” and in written sources they sometimes wrote “chicken.”

In 1689, an icon with the image of the Resurrection of Christ was hung on the door, after which they were assigned the name “Resurrection”. It is noteworthy that the doors themselves gave the name of one of the central squares of the city. Until 1917, it was called “Resurrection,” and with the advent of Soviet power, it received a new name: “Revolution Square.”
Chapel
In 1669, a small wooden canopy was built near the door, under which they began to maintain a list of revered worshipers of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God. Then, instead of a canopy, they erected an elegant chapel or, as they said then, a chapel.

At the end of the 19th century, a ruined wooden building was demolished, and instead a stone chapel appeared at the door, designed by the famous architect Matvey Fedorovich Kazakov and the Italian architect Pietro Gonzago. Since then, many Muscovites and guests of the capital knocked on the door Iversky.

Door in the XVIII-XX centuries.

In 1737, a double door was damaged during a fire. An experienced architect and master of the Russian baroque, Ivan Fedorovich Michurin, was invited to restore them.

A two-story tower was used as a residential. In the second half of the eighteenth century, there lived a well-known Russian journalist and editor, Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov, who was in charge of the nearby printing house of the University of Moscow.

By tradition, all the men who passed under the Voskresensky gate to the Red Square had to take off their hats, and before entering the faithful they were necessarily attached to the Iveron icon. People prayed constantly in the chapel. It is true that he was small and could not accommodate more than 50 people. It is noteworthy that the Iveron icon was revered not only orthodox. The Catholics who came to the city came to bow down before her.

The invasion of French troops devastated the city. After the enemy left, the restoration of the doors and chapels was entrusted to the Russian architect and great pseudo-Gothic lover Alexei Nikitich Bakarev. The restored chapel really liked Muscovites and began to be perceived as a monument to victory over Napoleon.

In the autumn of 1917, real street battles broke out in the area of ​​Voskresenskaya Square. Troops loyal to the old regime used the Gate of Resurrection as a line of defense and tried not to let the Bolsheviks go to the walls of the Kremlin. However, the history of the country has already taken a sharp turn, the power in the state has changed.

Door towers

In the 1920s, the talented restaurateur Pyotr Dmitrievich Baranovsky led the review of the Kazan Cathedral, the chapel and the Iversky Gate. The restaurateurs did a great job trying to restore the old buildings to their original image. They restored the picturesque carved platforms at the door, but could not finish what was started.

The fate of the old monuments in the Kremlin was already an inevitable conclusion. The Moscow leadership announced its plans to use the Red Square for military parades, physical processions and public demonstrations. The Gate of Resurrection interfered because it blocked the passage for transport. In addition, religious buildings did not fit the new Soviet ideology, so it was decided to destroy the doors, the chapel and the cathedral.

The prayer chapel was dismantled in 1929, placing a pathos statue of a worker in an empty place. The door did not hold for long. They were demolished two years later, and the passage was renamed Historic. For several decades, columns of workers and athletes, as well as military equipment, passed unimpeded on the clear road to the main square of the country.

In the mid-1990s, the Moscow government took the initiative to restore lost historical monuments. The construction work was supervised by a student of P. D. Baranovsky Oleg Igorevich Zhurin. The construction of an exact copy of the stone door and a small chapel took two years and was completed in 1995.

Then, the passage of the Iversky Gate became a pedestrian zone, prohibiting traffic. Since 2008, cars and parade equipment have entered the Red Square along the Kremlin Drive, which is closer to the Kremlin.

Architectural features

The old doors fit perfectly in the space that separates the massive building of the State History Museum and the Old Town Hall, and together with them they form a harmonious architectural ensemble. Two faceted green tents, like the old one, are crowned by golden eagles with two heads.

The restored doors are painted dark red, and the decorative elements: platforms, columns and belts are highlighted in white. This makes the building elegant and festive. The drawings and postcards of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show that this was not always the case. Previously, the Resurrection Gate was white.

Gate of the resurrection today

The passage at the Resurrection Gate has long been one of the most popular walks in the capital. Muscovites and tourists like to walk on clean sidewalks and admire the pseudo-Russian facades of buildings. A small Iverskaya chapel is located exactly in the middle between the arches of Manezhnaya square. Pedestrians pass under one of the door arches, and the other is almost always closed by a metal grid.

Near the door is a popular tourist attraction: “Zero kilometer of Russian roads”. The tradition of marking a symbolic place from which distance is maintained is found in many countries of the world. In Moscow, that monument appeared in 1995. The bronze sign was made under the direction of the sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov and mounted on a cobblestone pavement. It is made especially for tourists. The true zero kilometer is located near the Central Telegraph building, located on Tverskaya Street, 500 meters from the Resurrection Gate.

How to get

It is easy to walk to the architectural monument from the Teatralnaya, Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Okhotny Ryad metro stations.
Address: Moscow
First mention: 1535
Dismantled: 1931
Start of construction: 1994
End of construction: 1995
Project author: Petrok Maly Fryazin (1535), recreation – O.I.