View of the main sights of Kalyazin: a "floating" bell tower, a radio telescope and a bridge over the Zhabnya River
The main attraction of Kalyazin, the bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral (1796-1800), became a landmark after completely unhappy events - the flooding of the Uglich Sea most of the old city, with a trading square, the old Holy Trinity Monastery, streets and settlements ... Nowadays, a high five-tiered the bell tower, one of the symbols of the city and the entire Volga, marks the place where there was once a high bank of the river, on which the trading square was noisy, from where the roads diverged in different directions, and opposite stood the beautiful old Trinity Monastery with a similar bell tower, as if echoing Nikolskaya.
Nikolsky (Nikolaevsky) Cathedral was built in 1694. It was a building typical of the Volga region of the 17th century; many such temples have been preserved in the Yaroslavl region and near it. Next to the cathedral stood the "warm" church of John the Baptist (1792). The five-tiered bell tower, more than 70 meters high, was added in 1794-1800.The construction was carried out by the peasants of Colonel Vasily Fedorovich Ushakov, the owner of the village of Nikitsky, whoSome undertook to build the bell tower “according to the plan and facade”, and in case of unsuccessful work, rebuild it at their own expense.P built in good faith. So conscientiously that she resisted even against the water. There were 11 bells on the ringing tier, the largest one weighed 501 pounds (more than 8 tons). Now there are a few small bells left, but only the wind can ring them ...
In the 1930s, in connection with the construction of a giant dam in Uglichand the creation of the Uglich reservoir, Kalyazin was destined to go under water for the most part, located on the banks of the Volga. All buildings in the sentenced areas were to be demolished. Trinity Monastery, churches and residential buildings were blown up. But due to some inexplicable mistake made by those who were responsible for the demolition of houses, they did not manage to blow up the bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral when the water had already begun to rise. After the Uglich reservoir covered the city, they decided not to touch the bell tower, leaving it as a navigational sign. Long time inThe lower arch of the bell tower could be sailed by boat. To prevent the walls from collapsing, a dike was finally made - earth was poured around the building, and a small island turned out, even with a wooden pier. It used to be possible to climb the bell tower to the second tier, but now the doors are firmly locked to prevent accidents. She herself rises above the water by 70 meters. Excursions go to it, private boats land tourists on the island, and the decks of passing motor ships are always densely dotted with passengers who cannot help but look at the bell tower standing in the middle of the water, a beautiful, majestic and slightly sad symbol of today's Kalyazin.
Overnight, in April 2014, the famous flooded bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kalyazin was ... on land! This hasn't happened in 17 years.
Every year, from February to April, the Uglich hydroelectric power station discharges water from the reservoir (in the middle of which stands a magnificent bell tower), it becomes shallow by three meters, but the bell tower still remained surrounded by water. In the same year, the winter was not snowy, there was almost no thawing, so it was “bare”!
In Kalyazin, the “outcrop” of the bell tower was treated with trepidation. For people, this place is not just a monument of history and architecture, a brand of the area, but also a symbol of holiness, loneliness and timelessness. VV In early May, the water will return, as in previous years.
Kalyazin until 1917
Kalyazin. Embankment during the spring flood. Pre-revolutionary photo
THE MYSTERY OF THE FLOODED BELL TOWER IN KALYAZIN.
(Kalyazin, the flooded bell tower of the Nikolaevsky Cathedral. The story * about the big bell.)
The story of a large bell, which supposedly lies in the flooded basement of the bell tower.
It seems that this was the case. All buildings in the flood zone had to be either destroyed or moved to a non-flood area. It is impossible to move the stone cathedral and, like all stone buildings, they began to demolish it. However, one of the architect enthusiasts (unfortunately, I can’t remember his last name) stood in the way of the breakers, even went to Moscow, but persuaded him to leave the bell tower of the cathedral like a lighthouse, because the Volga makes a sharp turn in this place, almost at an acute angle . True, there is a version that the bell tower was not blown up because they simply did not have time before the spring flood, but it does not stand up to criticism, because the demolition was controlled by the almighty NKVD, it was not blown up this year, it would be blown up next. The version about the lack of explosives is also untenable, for the same reason.
Another thing is the bell that hung on the topmost tier of the bell tower. It had to be taken off. We have all seen the footage of the newsreel, where the bell is pushed through the arched opening of some bell tower, and it falls, breaking on the ground. The same should have happened in Kalyazin. The bell was removed from its suspension and lowered onto logs laid in the arch opening. And then it turned out that the bell simply does not fit into this opening, either higher or wider than it. Since there was already an imperial order not to blow up the bell tower, they did not begin to demolish the tier, but to comb the arched opening for a long time (and the spring flood is just around the corner), it was necessary to lower the bell a tier lower, where the opening is wider. When lowering, the temporary suspension could not stand it, and the bell collapsed onto the lags prepared below. A multi-ton (501 pounds) colossus easily broke through them, like all the floors of the lower tiers. It so happened that the bell fell smoothly and not rapidly, lingering on each ceiling, and, in the end, stood on the vault of the basement of the bell tower, which thought and thought, and broke through too. From the open doors of the gates of the lower tier, clouds of brick dust, some pieces of paper, and chips were carried out, there was a rumble, the earth trembled. As a result, the bell ended up in a deep cellar.
It is clear that the comrades were not ready for such a turn of events. Everything was prepared to lower the bell, not to raise it. It was clear that it was simply impossible to manage before the flood, and they simply waved their hand at the bell. By the beginning of summer, when the flood subsided, it turned out that the basement was flooded with water. And they again waved their hand at the bell, now for a long time (it would seem - forever, but - no).
WAR.
By the beginning of the war, the level of the reservoir reached the design level, and the bell tower was a good 200 meters away from the shore. The base of the bell tower went under a seven-meter layer of water, almost one and a half tiers. A snow-white needle in the middle of the blue waves, it's beautiful, but the locals were not happy, for them, those who stayed in Kalyazin and did not move to another city, the bell tower became a symbol of the city's murder. And they didn't complain to her. Except, of course, the ubiquitous boys, who, with the opening of the swimming season, immediately swam to the bell tower. It was they who brought the first rumor that the bell, lying in the flooded basement of the bell tower, was buzzing. These are fairy tales, adults said, this cannot be. However, maybe. On a clear moonlit night, in early June 1941, the bell struck for the first time. The next night the city did not sleep. The bell started ringing. Not often, once every few minutes, but until the morning.
The old people said that this was the alarm, that - to the war. And on the night of June 22, the bell already beat all night often and strongly. A low rumble was carried by the waters for many kilometers, the alarm was heard in all coastal villages, even some Kashin residents (from Kalyazin to Kashin in a straight line about 20 km) said that they had heard it. The news of the beginning of the war was already perceived by everyone as an expected event ...
After June, the bell seems to have died down, and at the beginning of winter, right from the polo ice, the alarm sounded again ... This was exactly before the start of the counteroffensive near Moscow. The people of Kalyazin noticed that the bell begins to ring before the start of big battles, before the Battle of Stalingrad, before Kursk. At the end of April, on the 45th, he called for a long time, foreshadowing the battle for Berlin.
WARNING.
For a long time it was a mystery why he hit on the night of August 6 and 9 in 45, until the atomic bombing of Japanese cities was announced. But it was after the August alarm that the local party leadership took the first steps to resolve the issue of how to respond to such "warnings." A secret letter was written to the Tver Regional Party Committee. There was no reaction for a long time, but in the summer of 46, a diving boat came from the semi-secret office of EPRON (special purpose underwater expedition). Having moored directly to the bell tower, two divers descended from it into the water. One of them managed to stick his hand under the bell, feel for his tongue and attach it with wire, thus eliminating the possibility of a fight. And the bell fell silent... not for long.
HOPE.
The locals did not have much hope that the bell would be silent forever. But the old people believed that the problem would soon be solved by itself. That the bell tower will simply be destroyed by spring ice drifts, as they destroyed several churches on the Rybinsk Sea in just five years. Here, near Kalyazin, the reservoir is smaller, and the winds are not the same, but the noise of ice drift in the spring, when ice floes half a meter thick break against the skeleton of the bell tower with a deafening crack, seemed to fully confirm such assumptions. However, years passed, but the bell tower stood as if nothing had happened.
EARTHQUAKE.
The next time the bell rang on a chilly October (October 5th) evening of 1948, it was still dark. It had never happened before that he would strike in the light of day. At this time of the year, and even in such weather, life in the city calms down early, and the whole city heard the alarm ringing. Panic swept through Kalyazin - tomorrow, they say, an atomic war will begin. But the bell foreshadowed a completely different event: on October 6 at 4.14 Moscow time, or at 1.14 local time, a devastating earthquake wiped out the city of Ashgabat.
FIVE WERE INcapacitated.
The second time the Epronians appeared at the bell tower in the summer of 1950. They were much more determined. A large barge anchored at the bell tower, two diving boats moored to it. On one of the bots was a group of scientists who specialized in, as they now say, anomalous phenomena. Before the sounding of the bell, it was decided to conduct research. The divers made several dives, measured the bell and the cellar. However, on the third day, all work was hastily curtailed, and the whole team, without informing the local authorities, quickly left the place of work and departed home. The fact is that out of fifteen members of the expedition, five turned out to be incompetent at once. Two of the four divers had decompression sickness (and there was no decompression chamber on the boat, because work was expected at a shallow depth, up to 12 meters). The minder of one of the boats fell down from a stroke, the captain of the same boat fell ill from severe indigestion, and the captain of the barge was found to have ... tropical fever. One person from the scientific group was also a doctor, so everyone survived and even recovered quickly, it was only necessary to move away from the bell tower at a decent distance. And no more attempts were made to examine the bell. And he continued to ring occasionally. Usually his rare blows foreshadowed misfortune. But some said that you can swim in a boat under the arch of the bell tower and listen. If he does not knock softly, then you will live for a long time. And if it hits ... And some daredevils tried their luck, came to Kalyazin, took a boat for a while, and went to the bell tower.
NEW WARNINGS.
In the period up to the end of the 70s, the bell foreshadowed big and small tragedies several more times, but more and more often local, local. People basically stopped reacting so sharply to the underwater ringing, the bell rang rarely and once or twice. Everything changed in the summer of 1979. At the beginning of July, in the predawn darkness, the bell gave a long series of dull thuds and died down again. And suddenly, in the middle of winter, from under the ice again there were muffled blows. People told me that it hit with such force that tremors ran across the ice. That year the winter was not snowy and the ice was almost clear. From the blows and the subsequent rumble on the surface of the ice, rare snowflakes gathered into complex mysterious patterns. Some even claimed. that they saw incomprehensible words similar to Arabic script. In that era of stagnation and relative prosperity, no one expected war. But it happened, on the night of December 28-28, columns of the Soviet army crossed the border of Afghanistan, marking the beginning of a ten-year war that claimed thousands and thousands of lives.
THE BELL TOWER IS ON THE ISLAND.
It was no longer possible to disregard such a manifestation of the bell. The local leadership reported to Tver about what was happening, about the mood among the residents. On the eve of great worries about conscription, the upcoming Olympics and the then planned relocation of the capital of the RSFSR from Moscow to Tver, the regional authorities lacked only the confusion from the mystical bell of a half-flooded bell tower for complete pleasure. Money was allocated, a contractor was identified, design and estimate work was carried out, and a dredger arrived at the bell tower by the opening of navigation. On the one hand, he carried out work on cleaning and deepening the fairway, on the other hand, he lathered a decent-sized shoal around the bell tower. Later on, a whole barge of crushed stone and rubble stone was laid out on this aground. Since then, the bell tower has stood on an island, hiding a third of its height underground. The official version of the embankment is to protect the monument of history and architecture from destruction by waves and ice. But now we know the real reason.
For almost thirty years no one has heard the bell, and it is becoming less and less common to hear about it. The people of Kalyazin used to not like talking about this topic too much, and now, when many of those who heard the sound from under the water are no longer alive, the question of it in general can puzzle a local resident ........
The bell tower in the middle of the water is beautiful and sad. After all, once there were streets and squares, life was in full swing. Kalyazin broke up. The mouth of the Zhabnya River, which expanded as a result of the construction of the Uglich hydroelectric power station, tore off the river Svistukha, barely visible in the distance, from the main part of the city. The third part of Kalyazin - the one that surrounded the ancient monastery, disappeared under water.
One of the symbols of Kalyazin is the flooded bell tower. Kalyazin himself is located relatively close to Moscow on the banks of the Volga. Bell tower
built in 1800 at the St. Nicholas Cathedral, which was erected in 1694. The bell tower (height 74.5 m) was rebuilt in 6 years. She had 12
bells. The largest bell of 1038 pounds was cast in 1895 with the money of the monastery in honor of the accession to the throne of Nicholas II.
Photos and text Kireeva Andrey
2. By the 1940s, the Volgostroy project was approved, the beginning of which was laid back in the 1920s. This project provided
artificial expansion of the Volga River, the creation of hydroelectric power stations in its water area. When creating the Uglich reservoir, the old part
Kalyazina was in the flood zone; the cathedral was dismantled, and the bell tower was left as a lighthouse.
3. The Volga River.
4. As soon as loaded barges began to move along the Volga, it became clear that it was impossible to navigate by other signs, since it is very
sharp bend in the river. In archival documents of that time, the bell tower appears as a lighthouse.
5. So the bell tower looks close.
6. In Soviet times, there was talk that the bell tower should be demolished. They talked about the fact that it is advisable to disassemble it, since it is a little
tilted due to the fragility of the foundation, but at the end of the 80s of the XX century, the foundation of the bell tower was strengthened, an artificial island was created around
with a mooring for boats.
7. Church of the Ascension. It was built in 1783. Initially, it was a cemetery church, assigned to the Nikolsky (Nikolaev) Cathedral. It was built when the cemetery of the Nikolaevsky parish was moved from the cathedral to a place more distant from the city center. Eminent Kalyazinians, merchants, clergy, intelligentsia, and philistines rested in the cemetery. In Soviet times, the Ascension Church was closed, used as a bakery. The church gradually fell into disrepair, and only in the 1990s did its revival begin.
8. The expanses of the Volga are impressive.
9. At sunset.
10. During this trip (June 2014) it was incredibly hot. And everything around was just hot from the sun.
12. In Kalyazin, you can negotiate with the locals and ride with the breeze on a motor boat along the Volga.
13. White nights. June 2014.
16. Before sunrise. The sun has just set and in a couple of hours it will be sunrise.
17. Sunrise.
Someone will write in the comments again that I posted a bunch of the same type of photos. But I want to show you how the same place changes depending on the time of day.
18. I liked this moment of the whole trip along Kazyazin the most. The sun breaks through the narrow openings of the bell tower.
19. The sun is already high. Another hot day ahead. And my path lay further north. In Uglich. And as a result, I arrived on this trip to Solovki and then even further, almost to Murmansk.
21. Kalyazin before flooding. Artist Gennady Sotskov. Canvas. Butter.
I did not copy it, as many have already done it before me. Whether this is a myth or reality is anyone's guess.
I will only give a story about the removal of the bell and which allegedly lies in the flooded basement of the bell tower.
All buildings in the flood zone had to be either destroyed or moved to a non-flood area. It is impossible to move the stone cathedral and, like all stone buildings, they began to demolish it. However, one of the enthusiastic architects stood in the way of the breakers, even went to Moscow, but persuaded them to leave the bell tower of the cathedral like a lighthouse, because the Volga makes a sharp turn in this place, almost at an acute angle. True, there is a version that the bell tower was not blown up because they simply did not have time before the spring flood, but it does not stand up to criticism, because the demolition was controlled by the almighty NKVD, it was not blown up this year, it would be blown up next.
The version about the lack of explosives is also untenable, for the same reason.
Another thing is the bell that hung on the topmost tier of the bell tower. It had to be taken off. We have all seen the footage of the newsreel, where the bell is pushed through the arched opening of some bell tower, and it falls, breaking on the ground. The same should have happened in Kalyazin. The bell was removed from its suspension and lowered onto logs laid in the arch opening. And then it turned out that the bell simply does not fit into this opening, either higher or wider than it. Since there was already an imperial order not to blow up the bell tower, they did not begin to demolish the tier, but to comb the arched opening for a long time (and the spring flood is just around the corner), it was necessary to lower the bell a tier lower, where the opening is wider. When lowering, the temporary suspension could not stand it, and the bell collapsed onto the lags prepared below. A multi-ton (501 pounds) colossus easily broke through them, like all the floors of the lower tiers. It so happened that the bell fell smoothly and not rapidly, lingering on each ceiling, and, in the end, stood on the vault of the basement of the bell tower, which thought and thought, and broke through too. From the open doors of the gates of the lower tier, clouds of brick dust, some pieces of paper, and chips were carried out, there was a rumble, the earth trembled. As a result, the bell ended up in a deep cellar.
It is clear that the comrades were not ready for such a turn of events. Everything was prepared to lower the bell, not to raise it. It was clear that it was simply impossible to manage before the flood, and they simply waved their hand at the bell. By the beginning of summer, when the flood subsided, it turned out that the basement was flooded with water. And they waved their hand at the bell again.
On June 16, 1931, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided: "To solve the problem of watering the Moscow River by connecting it to the upper reaches of the Volga River." The construction of the Moscow-Volga canal began. In 1934-1937, at the junction of the canal with the river, the dam of the Ivankovskaya HPP, the first station of the Volga Canal, rose above the Volga channel and banks. Its construction was carried out to fill the Volga part of the canal with water, create navigable depths in the upper reaches of the Volga to Tver, and supply Moscow with Volga water and electricity. The dam raised the waters of the Volga by 17 meters, up to 124 meters on the Baltic scale of heights. The rising waters flooded magnificent pine forests, about 110 villages and villages with 20 temples.
Kalyazin is probably the most famous of the "drowned cities". The modern panorama of Kalyazin is known to the inhabitants of Russia, standing in the middle of the Volga waters with a bell tower left over from the flooded ensemble of St. Nicholas Cathedral.
You can get to Kalyazin from Moscow both along the Dmitrovsky highway and along the Yaroslavsky highway. If you go along the "dmitrovka", then from Taldom towards Kalyazin villages with interesting names begin.
Sometimes locals, and maybe visiting tourists, add charm to the name of their village. From the series how it was and how it became. 
Already at the entrance to the Tver region, you pass the village of Spas - Angle - the birthplace of the Russian writer M.E. Saltykov - Shchedrin. This used to be his family home. A year after the October Revolution, the communists confiscated the Saltykovs' house, and then it burned down completely. So we can only admire the museum of the writer in the village church and his bust - a monument.
Behind the church is the Saltykovs' family cemetery, the writer's father and many members of his family are buried here, and Saltykov-Shchedrin himself rests on Literary bridges in St. Petersburg
After the village of Spas - Angle to Kalyazin, another 40 kilometers. In total, from the Moscow Ring Road to Kalyazin, I got a distance of 185 km.
There are several versions of the origin of the name of the city of Kalyazin. According to one of them, it comes from the Finno-Ugric word "kola", that is, "fish" (once fishermen from Finno-Ugric tribes settled here). Another version connects the name of the city with the name of the boyar Ivan Kolyaga, who owned these lands. Having lost his entire family, he went to the Trinity Monastery, founded no later than 1434 on the left bank of the Volga by the Monk Macarius of Kalyazinsky. Monument to Macarius erected in Kalyazin in 2008
In connection with the creation of the Uglich reservoir, the ensemble of the monastery was blown up and dismantled in 1939-1940. Together with him, the entire Trans-Volga (former Podmonastyrskaya Sloboda) was under water. Now at this place you can see the islands overgrown with trees and shrubs, popularly called Monastic.
Now tourists often come to the large Monastyrsky Island to rest and live there in tents right on the banks of the Volga.
In 2001, the reconstruction of the corner south-east tower of the monastery began on the islands on the foundation that had been preserved there. It is supposed to house the chapel of St. Macarius.
And this small island near Monastyrskoe is called the "island of love" by the Kalyazin people. This is rather the unofficial name of the island.
On the eve of the flood, 9,000 people lived in the city. There were 1300 houses on the streets, of which more than 200 were made of stone, more than 530 houses fell into the flood zone. The entire trading area of the city with two hundred stone and wooden shops and stores went under water.
Karl Marx Street in the city, it goes down to the water and goes under it.
The street is paved with cobblestones, under water it rests directly on the bell tower. In the water you can see that this is a former cobblestone pavement
The 70-meter Kalyazinsky bell tower, rising alone in the middle of the water. This is all that remains of the Nicholas Cathedral, destroyed and flooded.
In 1960-1963 and 1990-1991, the monument was strengthened, and a small sandy island was poured around it to protect the foundation from water. Now locals take tourists there on boats.
Behind the bell tower passes the fairway of tourist ships going along the route Uglich - Moscow. There are many of them in a day.
On the island where the bell tower stands, there is even a small pier.
The bell tower itself this year was opened only once on the day of St. Nicholas and a service was held in it. The rest of the time, the doors of the bell tower are closed and it is not possible to get there.
On the island there is a small beach where you can swim and where many small boats come.
People constantly ride around the bell tower on inflatable circles, which are tied to a boat or on jet skis.
Kalyazin is a small town with a population of 15 thousand inhabitants with many wooden houses.
I have not seen supermarkets, but there are shops where EVERYTHING you need is sold around the clock.
Stop prohibited on Thursday, I have not seen this anywhere 
Kalyazin has a city beach where you can sunbathe and play volleyball overlooking the flooded bell tower
Embankment in Kalyazin, sometimes this kind of bell tower (photo from this point) is printed on calendars or simply prospectuses
A beautiful new house under construction, on the Kalyazin embankment. What it will be in the future is unknown
For some reason, all streets in Kalyazin have 2 names, former and present
The building of the former city government of Kalyazin with an observation tower
It's funny that the second most popular landmark of Kalyazin after the bell tower is the antenna of the space communications center with a powerful radio telescope. In 2010, there was a fire at the facility and the antenna is temporarily out of service.
Leaving Kalyazin on the way to Moscow, you can see beautiful graffiti with a patriotic twist
And finally, a list of the most famous cities that went under water during the construction of the Moscow Canal: Korcheva, part of Kalyazin, part of Uglich, Uchma, part of Myshkin and the epicenter of the Volga tragedy -
This collection contains amazing flooded churches that once gathered believers and prospered. This peculiar struggle of nature with religion looks exciting and at the same time tragic.
It is worth noting that nature collapsed on these temples and churches not of its own free will, but through the fault of a person blocking the path of rivers and interfering with the natural course of nature.
Church in Potosi, Venezuela
All that remains on the surface is the cross of the church. The whole village was flooded, and the inhabitants were resettled against their will during the construction of the reservoir. Initially, even the cross was not visible, but then nature intervened in its face. Due to the impact of a process called Elniño, when the ocean surface is very warm, a drought has been caused and some of the water has receded. 
Church of St. Nicholas, Macedonia
This church was built in 1850 and stood for 153 years until the decision was made to create an artificial lake. Naturally, the church disappeared under water, but periodically appears during times of drought. Locals see this as an ominous sign 
Church in Karnataka, India
The story is just as banal. The temple was built in 1860, and a century later a dam was built, the population was evacuated, and the church periodically goes under water, then reappears 
Church of Petrolandia, Brazil
The majestic temple was submerged under water after the construction of another dam, and its top remained above the water 
Church in Krokino, Russia
There are similar places in Russia. The church, built in the 15th century, was flooded after the construction of a hydroelectric power plant. 
It's amazing how the building is still resisting the effects of water - it's a truly breathtaking sight that tourists often come to see. 
Church of Lake Reshen, Italy
Reschen is an artificial lake in Italy, near the border with Austria, which completely swallowed up the village of Graun in 1950. Only the church tower did not submit to the water. You can still hear church bells ringing during high winds 
Graun's people tried their best to save their village, but in vain, 163 houses and 1,290 acres of farmland were drowned due to the desire of the electric company to build a dam. The spire is all that remains of the dreams and aspirations of those who once lived here. 
Belfry of the city of Kalyazin, Russia
The bell tower is all that remains of the monastery of St. Nicholas, built in 1800 in the city of Kalyazin. The bell tower is considered a symbol of old Russia, which disappeared forever after the revolution. In 1939, Stalin decided to flood the city in order to create a reservoir on the Volga River. 
These sunken churches are proof that humans can create incredible structures, but there are bound to be other humans who can destroy everything in one moment. We drown whole cities and villages to create dams and reservoirs, but churches stand invincible above the surface of the water. What is it, just nature or a message from God?
) in the city of Tver region. A monument of history and architecture, one of the symbols of the consequences of construction on the Volga, which destroyed hundreds of villages, towns and cities, with ancient structures that existed there.
Photo: Mikhail Arkhipov, 2011
The bell tower was built in 1800 at the Nikolsky Cathedral, which was erected in 1694 at the Nikolo-Zhabensky Monastery. The history of the now defunct monastery dates back to the 11th-12th centuries. At that time, Novgorod merchants, trading with Russians and other lands along the Volga, arranged their strongholds at the mouths of small rivers, built small churches and named them after the patron saint of travelers, St. Nicholas of Myra. And so the monastery "Nikola on Zhabna" appeared.
Nicholas Cathedral in 1903
The bell tower is made in the style of classicism, with five tiers, a dome with a dome and a spire, as well as a clock. Initially, the height of the bell tower was 74.5 meters. The bell tower had 12 bells. In the late 1930s of the XX century, during the creation of the Uglich reservoir, formed by construction in Uglich, part of the territory of Kalyazin, including all the main monuments of history and architecture, was flooded. The bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral was preserved and used as a lighthouse until the 1960s.
Photo: Sirius_MSK, 1977
In the late 1980s, an artificial island with a small pier was built around the bell tower, which had previously risen from the water, as there was a danger of the building collapsing due to water erosion (as happened later with the flooded one on the Sheksna River in the Vologda Region). Since 2004, after the start of cruise ship calls to Kalyazin, excursions were organized on pleasure boats with a landing on the island at the foot of the bell tower.
Photo: Mikhail Arkhipov, 2016
In 2015, a project for the reconstruction of the bell tower was developed, which provides for the strengthening of the foundation, the architectural illumination of the bell tower, the arrangement of a chapel inside it and an exhibition on the history of the monument. It is also planned to build a staircase and an observation deck inside the bell tower.
You can get to the island to the bell tower in winter on ice, and in summer - by boat. Such services are offered by local residents on the shore along Karl Marx Street, from where the best view of the bell tower opens.
Photo: Mikhail Arkhipov, 2016
In the forest on the right bank of the Volga, there is a TNA-1500, 200 meters high, operating at the Kalyazinsky Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Photo: Mikhail Arkhipov, 2011
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