Church of Elijah the Prophet

The Ilya Prorok church was built between 1647 and 1650 by the Skripin brothers, fur merchants who traded to Siberia and were wealthy enough to fund it privately - which is characteristic of Yaroslavl, where the churches were merchant projects rather than princely or state ones. It stands at the centre of Catherine II's 1778 radial plan, with avenues running off from it, and its interior was painted in 1680 by Gury Nikitin and Sila Savin with a workshop from Kostroma. The frescoes are what matter: dense narrative cycles covering every surface, and notably worldly in their detail - the scene of the harvest under Elisha's miracle shows peasants cutting rye with sickles, resting and drinking, painted with attention to actual seventeenth-century farm work, which is unusual in Russian church painting and is why art historians cite it. There is a carved iconostasis and a tent-roofed side chapel.

Highlights

• The 1680 frescoes - Gury Nikitin's cycles covering every interior surface.
• The harvest scene - peasants cutting rye, painted from observed seventeenth-century work.
• The merchant patronage - a church funded privately by fur traders, not the state.
• The position - the focal point of the 1778 radial plan around it.

When to go

May to September - the church closes in cold and damp weather to protect the frescoes. One hour.

What to expect

Closed from roughly October to April and in wet weather, which catches visitors out. Lighting inside is low for conservation. Photography is charged or restricted. It functions as a museum, not a working church.

Nearby

The Yaroslavl centre spreads around it; the Volga embankment is east.