Church of the Ascension

Moscow
Many Muscovites and guests of the capital associate the name “Temple of the Ascension of the Lord, near the Nikitsky Gate” with the name of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Indeed, in the winter of 1831, the first poet of Russia and the first beauty of Moscow were married in the Cathedral on Nikitskaya.
The temple at the Nikitsky Gate with invisible bonds tied the destinies of many outstanding people: clergymen, statesmen, creators of Russian culture.
The temple was first mentioned in the chronicles of the 15th century; it burned down in 1629.
In 1685-1689, Tsarina Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina built a stone Ascension Church. There is a version that in 1774 the secret marriage of G.A. Potemkin with Catherine the Great took place in the Ascension Church. In any case, it was he who ordered in 1790, shortly before his death, the construction of a new, larger stone church.
Construction began in 1798 and was finally completed only in 1848.
Today the building is the architectural dominant of the square.