Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Chocimsk, Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Chocimsk, Belarus.
The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity is a centrally planned cross-shaped church of the retrospective Russian style, built as a ten-times-smaller copy of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. A cubic main volume with side chapels, a narthex and a semicircular apse is topped by onion domes on octagonal drums, with a tented bell tower and a white-stone three-arched gate before it.
The cathedral was founded in 1861 to mark the abolition of serfdom and consecrated at Pentecost in May 1873 by Archbishop Yevsevy of Mogilev, as a copy of the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour reduced ten times in size. It was named after Chocimsk's earlier Trinity church. Closed by the Soviet authorities in 1938, it housed a bank, a mechanisation school, a grain store and a House of Culture before being returned to the parish in 1991.
The cathedral's name honours the Holy Trinity, and its main patronal feast falls on Trinity Sunday, the 50th day after Easter, when clergy from the whole district were once required to serve here. Since 2011 it has hosted the annual national bell-ringing festival "Chocimsk Bells". A 1,280 kg bell cast for the cathedral in 2004 was the first of its weight cast in Belarus.
The cathedral stands at 24 Kirova Street, with a white-stone three-arch gate in front of it; the bell tower's tent roof and the onion domes mark it from afar. Around it are a small Transfiguration church, a chapel dedicated to the "Life-Giving Spring" icon, a baptistery and a Sunday school. The 1,280 kg bell cast in 2004 hangs in the bell tower.
Since 2011 the cathedral has hosted "Chocimsk Bell Ringing", an annual national bell-ringing festival. In 2004 it received a 1,280 kg bell, the first of its weight cast in Belarus, delivered from Minsk for the 60th anniversary of the town's liberation and raised to the bell tower on 16 June.
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