Constantine and Helena Church, Eastern Orthodox church on Prospekt Pobedy, Vologda, Russia
Constantine and Helena Church is a stone Orthodox church built around 1690 in Vologda's Verkhny Posad. Its cubic main volume sits on a raised basement, with three-part facades divided by triple half-columns and windows framed by keel-shaped kokoshniks. A refectory and a three-tiered octagonal bell tower with a tented roof stand to the northwest.
The first wooden church on this site, dedicated to Dmitry Prilutsky, is thought to date from 1503, linked to the return of a revered icon from Ivan III's campaign against the Tatars. The stone church was built around 1690 and consecrated to Saints Constantine and Helena, with a lower side chapel for Dmitry Prilutsky. Closed on 24 February 1930, it housed cultural institutions and a knitting factory before being returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1997.
The church is dedicated to the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperors Constantine and Helen, while its lower side chapel honours Dmitry Prilutsky. Each 3 June a liturgy was held in the cathedral and here, followed by a cross procession from the city to the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery; the tradition has been revived. From 1898 to 1911 the priest was the Vologda writer and local historian Fr. Sergius (Nepin).
The church stands at Prospekt Pobedy 85 in the Verkhniy Posad district, between Prospekt Pobedy and Blagoveshchenskaya Street. The lower church has held regular services since 1998 and the upper church since 2008. Visitors enter through the west porch, whose stair leads up to the gallery; the bell tower adjoins the northwest corner of that gallery.
The church's facade composition has no direct analogue among Vologda's churches, which suggests it was built by visiting craftsmen rather than local ones. Its bell tower rises in three octagonal tiers of equal diameter, brought down to the ground in the old manner, with an open bell tier of arches and a small cupola.
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