Church of the Holy Life-giving Trinity in Sviblovo
It is assumed that the Trinity Church in the village of Sviblovo has existed since the time of Dmitry Donskoy, and was built when the village was owned by the Sviblovo boyars. However, the first reliable documentary mention of the church dates back to the beginning of the XVII century, when by order of the owner of the village Andrei Lvovich Pleshcheev from 1622 to 1623 a new church was built in place of the old wooden one. In 1677 Andrei Lvovich’s son Mikhail, who inherited the village, rebuilt the church again and added to it a side chapel in the name of Metropolitan Alexis. In 1672 the estate passed to Mikhail’s young daughter Marya, who was brought up by her uncle Kirill Alekseevich Naryshkin. In 1708 he built stone chambers and a stone church in the village, and in 1709 he added a bell tower to it. In 1938 the church was closed. In the 1970s and 1980s restoration works were carried out in the Sviblovo estate, affecting the church building as well. In 1990 Patriarch Alexy II requested the return of the temple to the Russian Orthodox Church, which was granted. In 1994 the temple received the status of a patriarchal suburbs. In 1995 services were resumed here. The building of the Trinity Church is the only fully preserved building of all the estate buildings of the early XVIII century. From the whole architectural ensemble of the estate only the building of the Trinity Church preserves the traditions of the Moscow Baroque, combined with the ornamental methods of the Petrine period: the cruciform plan of the church, decorative details of window cills and porticoes stylistically belong to the XVII century, while in the final parts elements of the new architecture can be traced. The main quatrefoil of the temple is crowned by a parapet with figured balusters, which allows to draw an analogy with the cathedral of the Moscow Epiphany Monastery. It was built later to replace the original crests in the Moscow Baroque style and echoed a similar one that crowned the Naryshkin’s chambers, built soon after the construction of the church in the Petrine Baroque style.
Address: Moscow, Lazorevy ave., 15, p. 3
