The Church of the Ascension of Christ (Вознесенская церковь) is a four-piered penticupolar Orthodox church erected in Kondakovo, a western suburb of Yaroslavl

Yaroslavl

Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located northeast of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. It is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities...

 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

Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, which falls on 2 February, celebrates an early episode in the life of Jesus. In the Eastern Orthodox Church and some Eastern Catholic Churches, it is one of the twelve Great Feasts, and is sometimes called Hypapante...

. This late Baroque

Baroque architecture

Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...

 building incorporates the 17th-century refectory

Refectory

A refectory is a dining room, especially in monasteries, boarding schools and academic institutions. One of the places the term is most often used today is in graduate seminaries...

, a survival from an earlier church. A belfry

Bell tower

A bell tower is a tower which contains one or more bells, or which is designed to hold bells, even if it has none. In the European tradition, such a tower most commonly serves as part of a church and contains church bells. When attached to a city hall or other civic building, especially in...

 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 depot

Depot

Depot is from the French dépôt which means a deposit or a storehouse. In English, depot can mean any one of a number of things, with minor variances between the different English speaking countries:Transport* Train station...

. Aleksey Soplyakov's fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

es from 1736 have all but disappeared. It was not until late 2000s that the buildings were returned to the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

and restoration work began.