Church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God consecrated at the Kazanskiy railway station in Moscow

On 1 November 2005, Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk consecrated the church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God at the Kazanskiy railway station in Moscow.

‘The first Divine liturgy will be celebrated here on November 4, which marks the feast day of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God and the Day of National Unity’, Metropolitan Clement said and added that the feast day of the Kazan icon was instituted in commemoration of the liberation of Moscow on 4 November 1612 by home guards who had the miraculous icon in their camp.

The church is located in a small room at the central entrance to the railway station. The arch is decoration with frescos made in Old Russian style. The church was designed by the architect Nikolai Vasnetsov, a grandson of a renowned artist Viktor Vasnetsov and project designer of the churches of the Kievan icon of the Caves and St.George’s at the Kievskiy and Belorusskiy railway stations respectively.

The project of restoring churches and chapels at the railway stations under the motto ‘Godspeed!’ has been implemented since 2001 in the framework of cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the ‘Russian Railway Stations’ joint-stock company with support of the Ministry of Transport.

The Kazan church is the third church at the railway stations in the capital city after the ones at the Kievskiy and Belorussskiy railway stations. There are also three chapels at the Moscow railway stations.