Ascension Church, Yaroslavl
The Church of the Ascension of Christ is a four-piered penticupolar Orthodox church erected in Kondakovo, a western suburb of Yaroslavl between 1677 and 1682.
The first church on the site was commissioned in 1584 by Basil Kondaki, a wealthy Greek merchant, in order to prevent the planned construction of a Lutheran church in Kondakovo. A smaller parish church is dedicated to the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. This late Baroque building incorporates the 17th-century refectory, a survival from an earlier church. A belfry dating from 1745 was demolished in the 20th century.
The parish churches sustained damage in the Yaroslavl Revolt of 1918 and were later adapted for use by a nearby car barn. The larger church, with all the domes taken down, was used as a :wikt:depot|depot. Aleksey Soplyakov's frescoes from 1736 have all but disappeared. It was not until the late 2000s that the buildings were returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and restoration work began.
