St. John the Baptist Cathedral, Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
St. John the Baptist Cathedral is a stone Orthodox church on Ivanovskoye Cemetery in Yekaterinburg, built 1846–1860 in a Byzantine-Russian style with one floor and one tower. Two side chapels were added in 1886–1888, and wooden Gothic-style iconostases stand in the left and right aisles.
The church was founded on 15 September 1846 with funding from merchant Arseny Telegin and consecrated on 12 September 1860 by Bishop Varlaam. Two side chapels were added in 1886: St. Nicholas (consecrated 27 December 1887) and the 'Soothe My Sorrows' icon chapel (3 June 1888). In 1943 it became the cathedral of the Sverdlovsk eparchy and remained the city's only open church for decades.
The cathedral's patronal feast is celebrated on 7 July, the Nativity of John the Baptist. It is also known as the Ivanovskaya Church, after the Ivanovskoye Cemetery beside it, where since 1914 victims of the First World War, the Civil War and later conflicts were buried. The cathedral keeps especially venerated icons of St. John of Tobolsk and St. Catherine alongside its patronal icons.
The cathedral is an active place of worship, so visitors should be aware that access may be restricted during services or religious observances. Respectful behavior toward the worshippers and the ongoing religious activities is expected when inside the building.
The cathedral stands on Ivanovskoye Cemetery hill near the old Moscow road to Perm, which made it visible from much of western Yekaterinburg. In 1922 Soviet confiscations took 15.5 kg of silver from the church. From 1943 it served as the cathedral of the Sverdlovsk diocese and, for nearly a third of a century, as the main church of the Urals.
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