In the small town of Anadyr, on the high bank of the Anadyr Estuary, stands the Holy Trinity Cathedral. This is the largest active temple in the world built of wood. Its height is almost 25 meters and an area of 600 square meters.
In the cathedral at the same time 1000 parishioners can be present. And it was built, not in those old days, when the forest was the main building material, but more recently. In 2015, Trinity Cathedral celebrated its 10th anniversary.
And before that, there was the Transfiguration Church in Anadyr, built back in 1862. This, in fact, was an ordinary house of worship with a chapel, which was repeatedly used during the Soviet era for anything. At one time, it housed a barracks, then a warehouse, a club, and even a store. In 1993, she was returned to believers and by common efforts, as they say, she was brought into a divine form with the whole world. But for more than a century of its existence, the chapel has become dilapidated and almost no longer accommodated the enlarged, field of collapse of the Union, the number of believers.
And so, in October 21, in 2000, a procession took place in the Transfiguration Church, which went from the church to the coast of the estuary, on which Bishop Diomede performed a public prayer, and there the cross was set as a mortgage to the new cathedral. But the decision and construction of the new cathedral was made only in 2002, and the cathedral was laid on April 12, 2004.
Trinity Cathedral was built on private donations from residents of Chukotka and Governor R. A. Abramovich. The cathedral in Omsk was designed by the architect P.N. Averchenko. The design of the temple is designed for low outdoor temperatures and high wind loads. All rooms are integrated under one roof. During the construction of the temple, various species of wood were used. The walls of the cathedral are made of pine, the floor and ceiling of Siberian larch, the inner lining of spruce with its unique smell. The doors are carved from ash, and the iconostasis from cedar, linden and elm.
Given that Anadyr is located in a very cold region, the walls are made double with a non-combustible basalt insulation filling. The wood is impregnated with an antiseptic and fire retardant, which protect against fire, rot and insects, as well as give the wood moisture-proof properties. The forest was harvested in the village of Znamenskoye, near Omsk. Initially, the entire cathedral was assembled in Omsk. All the details of the building were fitted one to the other and in the assembled form the cathedral frame was kept for almost two years for shrinkage. Then it was disassembled again, and in a disassembled form the cathedral building was delivered first to Vladivostok, and then by sea to Anadyr. All that was left was to assemble.
The main problem of installing the cathedral on the spot was that Anadyr, like all towns and villages in the North, stands in permafrost. The initial place had to be changed three times. The foundation of the building is made on reinforced concrete piles with a monolithic pile grillage. To avoid thawing and soil movement in the summer, to maintain a constant minus temperature of -3 ° C, 85 thermal columns were installed along the entire foundation.
Construction work was supervised by V. Grishmanovsky. In addition to assembly specialists, everyone from the parishioners and just residents of Anadyr participated in the construction. The roof of the cathedral is made of 4 mm thick copper sheets. Eight bells decorated with faces of saints specially cast for this cathedral in Voronezh are hoisted on the bell tower of the church.
The interior of the cathedral was also performed by Omsk artists and carvers. In the Trinity Cathedral, a five-tier iconostasis, designed by Sergei Patrakhin, is installed. In the iconostasis there are 51 handwritten images made in the style of the 15th century, in the tradition of Andrei Rublev. The iconostasis is framed by carved ornament and Church Slavonic script. Gilding of icons was performed by Larisa Minina.
Carvings were executed by Pavel Minin in the style of Theophanes the Greek. All furniture and ornamental carvings framed by the iconostasis are made by carvers Sergey Diyanov, Mikhail Minin and Sergey Tolmachev.
The royal doors are carved, decorated with images of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Evangelists, and covered with gold. Due to the peculiarities of the main hall of the temple, the royal gates are somewhat sunk deep into the altar relative to the general plane of the iconostasis, and therefore the icons adjacent to the gates from the sides are located at an angle.
For the iconostasis in the baptismal room, Pavel Minin executed three carved icons of the deesis row.
All 9 domes of the cathedral are assembled from metal structures and covered with a titanium alloy of golden color. According to experts, this modern heavy-duty material will not fade for several decades. Domes for the Trinity Cathedral in Chelyabinsk were made.
