The Church of the Transfiguration

From The Art Newspaper: Newly reopened 18th-century Church of the Transfiguration, topped with 22 domes, is said to have been built without a single nail.

Located on a remote island in Lake Onega, the Russian Orthodox church is part of an ensemble of storied wooden buildings known as Kizhi Pogost, listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1990
“According to legend, the lead builder, known as Master Nestor, built the church with a single axe, which he threw into the lake after his masterpiece was completed. He said “there never had been and would never be another church like it again””

Calculations by contemporary engineers and builders have not been able to fully explain how the structure holds together, because of its complexity and also the unpredictable nature of wood, “which behaves just like a person, completely differently in different situations”, Nezvitskaya says…

For now, those will be held just once a year, on the Orthodox Feast of the Transfiguration on 19 August.

More images here and google maps location here.

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