Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Yekaterinburg

Brief Information

The Church of the Exaltation of the Cross did not begin as an ordinary parish church, but as a house church attached to a children's shelter: the shelter itself stood across the road, in the building of today’s military enlistment office. This makes the place interesting to read not in isolation, but through its surroundings: the stone single-altar church on the street corner was connected with a charitable institution, and almost immediately also became a regimental church for soldiers from the nearby barracks.

This turn of events changes how one looks at the building. It managed to serve as a church attached to an orphanage, a regimental church, a parish church, and a cathedral, before later being closed; its dome and bell tower were demolished, and workshops were housed inside. When the church became active again in the 1990s, its former silhouette had to be restored only partially: in 1999–2000, a new domed drum appeared.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to compare three things: the church’s corner location, the building of the former shelter across the road, and the nearby Orovaisky Barracks mentioned in the description. This makes it clearer why a small single-altar church came to be part of several different histories at once: charitable, military, and monastic. The street corner gave it a prominent position, the shelter explains its first purpose, and the barracks explain its regimental role.

A separate detail is the top of the building. The original text states directly that after the closure the dome and bell tower were demolished, and that a new domed drum was built only in 1999–2000. Therefore, the present upper volume should be understood not as a continuously preserved part of the old church, but as a later trace of the return of its church function after the period when it housed workshops.