Holy ascension Cathedral, Orthodox cathedral in Velikiye Luki, Russia.

Holy Ascension Cathedral is a Baroque church in Velikiye Luki, built as the main church of the Ascension Convent. Its main volume is an octagon on a quadrangle, topped by a cupola with an eight-sided drum and an onion dome. Side chapels to the north and south are dedicated to Princes Boris and Gleb and to the Prophet Elijah, and a bell tower with eight arched openings stands at the west end.

The brick cathedral was completed in 1752 under abbess Margarita Kartseva, replacing earlier wooden churches of 1692 and 1715 that burned in 1719. It belonged to the Ascension Convent, founded in 1675 on the site of the Ilyinsky Monastery destroyed in 1610. The convent closed in 1918 and the church in 1925; the bell tower was dismantled in the late 1930s and the building served as housing and then a warehouse until it was returned to the faithful and reconsecrated in 1990.

Before the revolution the church was dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul and served as the main church of the Ascension Convent; in 1913 the convent counted 36 nuns and 130 novices. The three altars were dedicated to the Ascension, the prophet Elijah, and Saints Boris and Gleb. Closed in 1925, the building was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church at the end of the 1980s, and services resumed in 1995.

The cathedral stands in the block of the former Ascension Monastery, surrounded by 2- to 4-storey buildings of the later 20th century. The bell tower was rebuilt in the 1990s over the former western gallery, so its position differs from the original. Services resumed in 1995 after a restoration that lasted about ten years.

The bell tower that visitors see today is a reconstruction: the original, which held nine bells (the largest weighing 188 poods 37 funts), was dismantled in the late 1930s and a residential building put in its place. The rebuilt tower was shifted onto the volume of the former western gallery, so the proportions between church and tower differ from the 18th-century original.