Kizhi built without a single nail? Not really

The Russian people love to find the miraculous in objects that stand out for their uniqueness. The Kizhi Museum-Reserve is just one of those, so it has long acquired a beautiful legend. This legend said that its main church, the Transfiguration of the Lord, was built by the carpenter Nestor with one ax and without a single nail. And at the end of the work, he threw the ax into the lake so that no one else could create such beauty.

The curious guests of Kizhi did not undertake to look for the axe. But the nails in the building were found almost immediately – and they began to pester the guides. The latter had no choice but to admit that the churches of Kizhi were indeed built using nails. But there are very few of them.

Where are the nails?

The legends are not so wrong: directly in the log house – the wooden “body” of the church – there really were no nails and no. But in the hinges on which the doors are hung – there is. But most of them are in church domes. The domes of the Kizhi churches (there are 22 on Preobrazhenskaya and 9 on Pokrovskaya) are covered with “wooden tiles” – aspen plowshares that look like leaves. Each of these “leaves” is made by hand and is attached to the dome just with a nail. So there are thousands of nails in Kizhi churches.

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  Here they are, those same chapters with “leaves”

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According to the canons

Nails appeared in domes already during the construction of churches. Only then, in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were made of wood: iron was considered too expensive a material. Now, during restorations, iron nails are used, changing them together with the plowshare every 30–50 years. Laying the plowshare is a whole art, quite the author's. During the restoration, many experienced carpenters work on the bells, but the principle of “one dome – one master” remains unchanged.

Laying goes in a circle, filigree work, because the last detail should fall exactly into place. In a word, you can not believe the legends about the absence of nails in Kizhi churches. But the fact that the masters who work on them are able to build such beauty with almost one ax is pure truth. //fs.tonkosti.ru/sized/f550x700/7e/uq/7euq90xoycws40s0kksc840wc.jpg” media=”(max-width: 549px)”>