Today I want to introduce you to one of the attractions of my city Kercht. Let me remind you that I moved here with my daughter a few months ago.

So, near the central square of the city, not far from the embankment, at the foot of Mithridates rises the visiting card of ancient Kechy - one of the oldest temples in Russia, the Church of St. John the Forerunner.

The monument of architecture of Byzantine architecture was built in the VIII century. This is confirmed by the amphoras of the period of the 8th century found in his laying, as well as the inscription on one of the columns supporting the church vault. The inscription reads: “The servant of God, the son of George, rests here.

The month of the mummy of 3 (10 hours) 10 hours (in summer) from Adam 6260 "passed away (which corresponds to the year 752 of the Nativity of Christ). According to one of the legends, the foundation of the church was laid with the blessing of Andrew the First Called.

In the land of Kerch, John the Baptist was one of the most revered saints. There is evidence that the Kerch Strait was once called the St John Strait, and the city itself was the port of St John. As an invaluable relic, a stone block with a hollow in the form of an imprint of a human foot is kept in the churchyard. According to legend, the trace on the stone was once miraculously left by the Old Testament prophet himself.

In the epoch of the Crimean Khanate, the church, like most Christian churches, was converted into a mosque, and with time it became completely desolate. It became an Orthodox church again in 1774, when Crimea joined the Russian Empire.

In the XXI century, the church underwent a small restructuring, a three-nave porch in the pseudo-Byzantine style was attached to it, and later a two-tier bell tower and a northern porch were built. In the same years, builders found frescoes depicting two saints under the dome. According to the well-known art historian and restorer Igor Grabar, they could have been written by students of the great Byzantine icon painter Theophanes the Greek.

The feast of the Exaltation of the Cross In the 20th century, the temple divided the fate of many Orthodox shrines: in the 1930s it was closed, and during World War II, the building was badly damaged by fire. In the post-war years, the church was declared a monument of architecture, but no restoration work was carried out here at that time. The building was dilapidated, the cross had long been removed, the dome was gradually destroyed.

The attention of tourists attracted a completely different object - literally a few meters away, a large fish market.

Revival of the shrine began in the 1970s. In order not to collapse the remains of the dome and the drum, the craftsmen made a special metal frame that supports them. The walls of the extensions and the bell tower were restored. And in 1972 began to revive the ancient part of the temple. The artists tried to preserve all the ancient parts, replacing only those that were completely destroyed. Restorers had to study ancient samples of tiles and bricks and make exactly the same materials. They picked up the same limestone from which the temple was built thirteen centuries ago.

Restorers secured murals and remnants of ancient plaster.
Since over the centuries, there was a strong subsidence of the basement, the ground around the base of the southern and eastern facades of the ancient temple had to remove the ground, thus creating a platform - the lower tier. At the same time, in the 1970s, contrary to the ban, a new cross was installed on the dome.