Kizhi is a narrow strip of island on Lake Onega in the Republic of
Karelia, Russia. The island is popular for dozens of historical wooden
buildings that were moved to the island from various parts of Karelia
for preservation purposes during the 1950s. Today, the entire island and
the nearby area form a national open-air museum with more than 80
historical wooden structures. The most famous among them is the Kizhi
Pogost.
The Kizhi Pogost enclosure holds two wooden churches and
an octagonal bell tower built during the 18th-century. The jewel of its
architecture is the 22-domed Transfiguration Church with a large
iconostasis—a wooden screen covered with religious portraits. This
massive church is about 37 meters tall and made entirely of wood making
it one of the tallest log structures in the world.
The Church of
the Transfiguration was laid in June, 1714, after the old one was burnt
by lightning. Its major basic structural unit is a round log of Scots Pine
about 30 cm in diameter and 3 to 5 meters long. Many thousands of logs
were brought for construction from the mainland, a complex logistical
task in that time. A legend tells that the main builder used one axe for
the whole construction, which he threw into the lake upon completion
with the words "there was not and will be not another one to match it".
According to the Russian carpentry traditions of that time, the
Transfiguration Church was without using a single nail. All structures
were made of scribe-fitted horizontal logs, with interlocking corners
joinery. The basis of the structure is an octahedral frame with four
two-stage side attachments called "prirub".
The eastern prirub has a
pentagonal shape and contains the altar. Two smaller octagons of similar
shape are mounted on top of the main octagon. The structure is covered
in 22 domes of different size and shape, which run from the top to the
sides. The roofs were made of spruce planks and the domes are covered in
aspen. The design of this elaborate superstructure also provided an
efficient system of ventilation to preserve the structure from decay.
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