ABSTRACT
The first major surviving examples of masonry architecture in Muscovy are situated in the town of Zvenigorod, to the west of Moscow. By the end of the fourteenth century, Prince Yury, son of Moscow’s grand prince Dmitry Donskoi, had gathered sufficient resources to found a monastery subsequently known as Savva-Storozhevsky. In addition to the monastery Yury developed the fortified center of Zvenigorod. At the turn of the fifteenth century, he commissioned two stone cathedrals: the Dormition, which served as the court church within the city’s fortress, and the Nativity of the Virgin, located in the monastery. Both churches follow the plan of their twelfth-century predecessors at Vladimir and Bogoliubovo, with a central cube containing four piers, which support a single drum and cupola, and with three apses extending from the sanctuary’s eastern wall. Each facade is divided into three parts by attached columns, and the portals are framed by perspective arches.
