Dormition Church in the Volotovo field. Velikiy Novgorod. Russia

The audioguide tells the story, describes the architecture and reports interesting facts about the church of Dormition, founded in 1352.

The church of the Dormition was originally monasterial. Towards the end of the 17th century, the monastery began to depopulate. In 1764, it lost its status and the church became a parish. The renovations made during the years were not stateradical, the original architectural forms were cut off with extreme accuracy and the frescoes were almost entirely preserved. By the summer of 1941, restoration works had reached perfection, but the war blocked the works. The church, finding itself on the frontline was exposed to bombing and enemy fire.

After the war, a special commission declared it irretrievably lost. In 1955 its ruins were declared as a patrimony to be safeguarded.
In 1993, a group of restorers, in Novgorod, began renovating the church. The walls and pillars had been preserved in heights, ranging from 2 to 4 m, and about 40 square meters of frescoes were found on the lower sections.

In the apse, below, an older layer of painting was found, dating further back than the entire pictorial complex. According to some scholars, this ancient layer dates back to 1352, the year the church was built, while the pictorial complex of the whole church, according to the Chronicle of Novgorod, dates back to 1363. . Others extend the temporal limitations of the appearance of frescoes in the church of the Dormition: the oldest dates back to 1363, and the work was completed between the '80s and' 90s of the XIVcentury. The unknown author of church frescoes, such as Theophane the Greek, was related to the Byzantine traditions of the Paleologist period: its frescoes were sketched quickly.

You can examine the 3D model of the church and observe its interior, through the MuByz App. The audioguide has been made by professionals in the field of history and art.