Old Believers Pokrovsky Cathedral, Rostov-on-Don, Old Believer cathedral in Rostov-on-Don, Russia

The Intercession Cathedral is a stone Old Believer church in the Russian Revival style, built in 1913 to a design by Vladimir Pokrovsky on a tight plot hemmed in by city buildings. A long refectory joins a semicircular apse, an asymmetrically placed single-tier belfry and a porch, each crowned with a small cupola. Cast-iron entrance columns bear the stamps of Fyodor Nittner's Rostov mechanical works, and the refectory's round-arched windows have decorative plaster surrounds.

The stone cathedral was built in 1913 to the design of architect Vladimir Pokrovsky, funded by the nail manufacturer Nikolai Panin, on the opposite side of the street from the wooden Intercession Church of 1813. The wooden church closed in 1923 and its congregation moved here. Soviet authorities closed the cathedral in the 1930s, using it for a radio factory workshop; it reopened in 1946 under the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy.

The cathedral is the seat of the Don and Caucasian Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church. Its altar was consecrated to St. Elijah the Prophet, so it was also called Pokrov-St. Elijah Church. The eight-metre iconostasis was repainted by Old Believer masters, while many old icons donated by the Paramonov and Solovyov families survive.

The cathedral stands at Ulyanovskaya Street 37, on the side opposite the site of the demolished 1813 wooden church. It is an active Old-Rite church, so modest dress and quiet are expected during services; the eight-metre iconostasis and the cast-iron entrance columns with foundry marks are best examined outside worship hours.

In September 1942, during the German occupation, Old Believers hid gravely wounded Red Army soldiers and Jews who had escaped mass shootings in the cathedral crypt. When the occupiers found out, the wounded and leading community members were hanged on Cathedral Square and nineteen other Old Believers were shot at the corner of Semashko and Ulyanovskaya streets.