Where Pushkin and Goncharova Were Married: Documents on the Church of the Great Ascension

Pushkin and Natalia Goncharova were married in the Church of the Great Ascension on 18 February 1831. The main body of the new church by Nikitsky Gate was still unfinished; services were held in the section consecrated earlier. The documents establish the parish and explain the course of construction, but do not establish beyond doubt the exact spot inside the churchwhere the bride and groom stood.

Accounts of Pushkin and Goncharova’s wedding mention the ‘narthex’, the ‘refectory’ and the ‘Old Ascension’. The parish register records the marriage and names the parish; identifying the particular building and room requires a separate comparison of construction records and contemporary letters.

What is known for certain about where Pushkin and Goncharova were married?

Pushkin and Goncharova were married on 18 February 1831 in the parish of the Great Ascension by Nikitsky Gate. The State Museum of A. S. Pushkin gives this date and names the church in its description of the exhibition at the memorial apartment on Arbat Street. The same date appears in the 2024 historical and cultural assessment of the church.

There is also testimony from someone who was there. In a letter to Natalia Nikolayevna dated 25 September 1832, Pushkin recalled their wedding on 18 February on Nikitskaya Street, ‘in the parish of the Ascension’. He recounted a conversation between guests that he heard about later; he did not describe the church’s layout. The publication in the Russian Virtual Library confirms that the poet left a personal account of where the ceremony took place; it still cannot tell us which part of the church was used.

Scholarly and museum sources give 18 February according to the calendar used in Russia in 1831. In the new-style calendar, 18 February 1831 corresponds to 2 March. The two dates do not refer to two separate weddings. For a historical account, it is enough to state the date used in the sources and the location clearly: the Great Ascension by Nikitsky Gate.

What exactly is held in the Moscow archives?

The state register of unique documents in the Moscow Archival Fonds lists the parish register of the Church of the Ascension on Tsaritsynskaya Street for 1822–1831. It contains an entry dated 18 February 1831 recording the marriage of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin and Natalia Nikolayevna Goncharova. The register gives its precise archival location: the Central State Archive of Moscow, fond 2124, inventory 1, file 1722, folio 120. This archival reference distinguishes the surviving document from a biographical detail repeated many times. The historical address identifies the location of the parish: it refers to the church by Nikitsky Gate.

On the same page of the Moscow archival register , another piece of evidence follows the parish register: a record by Alexander Khlebnikov, a broker in the Prechistenskaya district, of Pushkin’s rental of part of the Khitrovo house on 23 January 1831. The archive cites fond 14, inventory 7, file 4190, folio 3, and notes an autograph at the end of the text. The two archival records link the church and the couple’s future home in time, but serve different purposes: one records the marriage, the other the tenancy agreement. This list does not say precisely where the rite took place or identify the particular room used for the ceremony.

Another source, which should not be confused with the parish register, is the pre-marriage inquiry: a preliminary church record checking for impediments to marriage. In the text of the document published by Modzalevsky , Archpriest Iosif Mikhailov and the clergy of the Church of the Ascension attest that the bride and groom were Orthodox, were not related within a prohibited degree, freely consented and had not been married before. It gives Pushkin’s age as 31 and Goncharova’s as 18. These are details of the legal and ecclesiastical requirements for the marriage, not an account of the service.

The signatures make the pre-marriage inquiry especially valuable. Alongside the bride and groom, the published text names the bride’s mother, Natalia Ivanovna, her father, Nikolai Afanasyevich, Pushkin’s brother Lev Sergeyevich, and Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky; it lists other guarantors as well. A signature shows that someone took part in completing the document, but cannot, on its own, place that person beside a particular column during the ceremony. So even this detailed list of participants leaves the article’s central question about the location within the church unanswered.

Why was the church unfinished on the wedding day?

The Great Ascension was built in stages. For a time, the old church stood beside the new building, while services were held from 1816 in the completed refectory section of the new church. This sequence is reconstructed in the historical account in the 2024 heritage protection assessment. It explains how a service could take place in a building that was not yet complete as a whole.

Prince Grigory Potemkin initially planned to rebuild the old church, but its foundations were judged insufficiently strong. After his death, his nephews arranged for a new church to be built on an adjoining plot. A contract was signed in March 1798; by 1805, the refectory had been built and work on its interior had begun, but the main body was not completed before 1812. The refectory was consecrated in 1816. From then on, it functioned as a church with two side chapels, although the project as a whole remained unfinished.

The heritage protection assessment gives a detail particularly relevant here: measured drawings from 1825 show the foundations and partially built sections of the main body. They document the building’s state six years before the wedding, although they do not depict the 1831 ceremony. Architects examined the foundations in 1829, and Osip Bove joined the project in 1830. Services continued in the consecrated section even as the façades and further building work were being debated.

Why were there two Ascension churches side by side?

The situation in February 1831 is easier to understand if we distinguish the history of the parish from that of the present building. According to the 2024 heritage protection assessment, a wooden church stood on the site as early as 1619 and burned down ten years later. A stone church is mentioned from 1670, and in 1685–1689 a new building with a tent-roofed bell tower was erected on the orders of Tsarina Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina. This earlier building stood where the present square is. On the plan, the old church is shown separately from the refectory in use at the time of the wedding.

A contemporary letter complicates the picture: on 19 February 1831, Alexander Bulgakov told his brother that the couple had been married ‘at the Old Ascension’. The published letter does not explain whether he meant one of the two churches or was using a familiar name for the parish. The 2024 heritage protection assessment notes that the church was known by two names in older documents; it also states that services in the old building ceased in 1816. Historical accounts from 2018 and 2024 place the wedding in the section of the new building then in use. Bulgakov also wrote that outsiders were barred from the ceremony and that police stood at the doors. He did not say where those doors were. His letter therefore cannot serve as a plan of the building: when comparing the evidence, both the name he used and the limits of his account matter.

Prince Grigory Potemkin initially wanted to rebuild the old church. The heritage report states that he inspected it with the architect Vasily Bazhenov; the plan was abandoned because its foundations were not strong enough. The prince provided an adjoining plot for a new church. After Potemkin’s death in 1791, his nephews, the Vysotskys, carried on the work: in 1795 they secured funding and commissioned Matvey Kazakov to design it. This explains why construction took place beside the old building, with both standing at the same time for a while.

A plan of Nikitsky Gate from 1800, reproduced in the experts’ historical account, already marks both the old and new Ascension churches. Construction of the refectory, with side chapels dedicated to the Presentation of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God and to St Nicholas the Wonderworker, began in 1798. By 1805 this section had been built and work on its interior had begun, while the main body was still at an early stage. Work remained interrupted after the events of 1812. Once the new section was consecrated in 1816, services ceased in the old building and parishioners moved to the adjoining site. From 1816, services were held in the refectory of the new churchwhile builders continued work on the rest of the building.

Measured drawings made by Alexander Shestakov in 1825 recorded the partially built altar, stone plinth, and some columns and their bases. This description does not mean that every detail remained exactly the same on the wedding day; six years passed between 1825 and February 1831. It does, however, show how much of the main body was unfinished. In 1829, a commission examined the ground and foundations and found them suitable for work to continue. Discussion of the design in 1830 did not prevent services from being held in the consecrated refectory.

In 1830, Osip Bove inspected the unfinished church and retained the main elements of Fyodor Shestakov’s design, adding four-column porticoes to the north and south façades. The drawings were approved at the end of that year; according to the heritage report, final approval of the design came at the end of 1831. The old church was demolished then, and its bricks were used in the construction of the new one. Thus, in February of the wedding year the old building still stood beside the refectory where services were held; it had ceased to be a regular place of worship in 1816. The Pushkins’ wedding should not be depicted against the fully completed ensemble we see today, nor placed in the old church simply because that building was still standing.

Why were Pushkin and Goncharova married at the Nikitsky Gates?

The bride’s parish affiliation influenced the choice of venue. The 2018 archaeological expert report states that the house on the corner of Skaryatinsky Lane passed to the Goncharov family in 1825, and that the clergy of the Church of the Ascension insisted on a wedding in their parish. The report provides no separate document recording that demand: this explanation comes from a later historical account, whereas the date of the marriage is confirmed by the parish register.

The Goncharov house belonged to the parish of the Greater Church of the Ascension, and services were already being held in its consecrated refectory. The letters by Pushkin examined here do not explain why he might have preferred a particular space or side chapel.

Did the family have another church in mind?

Evidence of the original plan survives in a contemporary letter, rather than in a record of a church decision. In a letter to his brother written on the wedding day, Alexander Yakovlevich Bulgakov reported that the couple had been intended to marry in the private chapel of Prince Sergei Mikhailovich Golitsyn, but Metropolitan Filaret would not permit it. The publication of the letter in Modzalevsky’s notes is valuable for its proximity to the event: the writer was relaying talk in Moscow on 18 February, not recalling the wedding decades later. Yet his account reports an intention and discussions without supplying the metropolitan’s decision. It explains why the wedding venue became a matter of dispute, but does not establish every motive of the church authorities.

The 2018 archaeological report gives a more definite version: the clergy of the Church of the Ascension insisted that the ceremony take place in the Goncharovs’ parish. These two strands of evidence should not be combined as though they were a single transcript. Bulgakov names the proposed private chapel and Filaret; the later historical account describes the position of the parish clergy and the bride’s home. Both indicate that another venue was considered and that the wedding ultimately took place at the Nikitsky Gates. The available texts do not establish who spoke to the family, or in what order.

Narthex or refectory: what do the historical accounts say?

Both heritage reports place the wedding in an area where services were already being held while the main body of the church remained unfinished. Their descriptions differ in precision, however. The 2018 report identifies the narthex of the new church; a 2024 assessment report more cautiously states that, according to historians, the ceremony took place in a completed and consecrated part of the building.

By the time of the wedding, services had been held in the refectory since 1816. There is therefore an architectural basis for locating the ceremony in the western section, which had been completed earlier. But saying that the couple married in the part of the church then in use does not establish that they stood in a particular side chapel. That would require a more precise record, a plan, or an eyewitness account locating them within the space.

Where do the names for the different parts of the church come from?

The refectory is the western part of the church building; here it had been completed, consecrated and used by the parish since 1816. The heritage description does not mean an ordinary dining room: the experts identify two side chapels accessible to parishioners. The narthex is the space by the church entrance; a brief 2018 account names it as the wedding venue. Applying these terms to the same building without a plan and a date can create a false contradiction, or suggest that the terms are entirely interchangeable. The documents allow us to distinguish levels of precision, but they do not reconstruct where people stood during the service.

A parish publication about the Greater Church of the Ascension places the ceremony in the “front, refectory section” and cautiously suggests a connection with the St Nicholas side chapel. The word “apparently” signals its degree of certainty. The church’s account has value as a record of local tradition, but the author’s qualification is crucial: the parish account provides neither a plan showing where people stood on 18 February 1831 nor a priest’s record naming the side chapel. Turning “apparently” into a caption identifying the exact wedding spot would give the source more certainty than it claims.

The heritage reports also serve different purposes. The 2018 document is an archaeological assessment of work near the neighbouring Church of St Theodore the Studite; the wedding appears in its historical overview. The 2024 report examines the Church of the Ascension itself as a cultural heritage site, lists its construction phases in detail and explicitly qualifies its account with “according to historians”. The greater amount of architectural information does not make the 2024 report an eyewitness account of the wedding. It does, however, provide a verifiable basis for assessing which parts of the building could have been in use in 1831, and why an overly precise caption referring to today’s interior is unconvincing.

Can a museum painting tell us where the ceremony took place?

Dmitry Belyukin’s painting “Pushkin’s Wedding” is the centrepiece of the wedding room at the Pushkin State Museum. The exhibition description correctly identifies the artist and the painting’s subject. The painting offers insight into how the event has been presented to visitors. But the painted scene is not a photograph from 1831 and cannot stand in for a plan of the church as it was then. Details of the setting in the painting can be discussed as artistic choices, but should not automatically be treated as evidence of the narthex, a side chapel or where people stood.

The same principle applies to the measured drawings of 1825. Made relatively close to the wedding, they show how far construction of the new building had progressed and help rule out the idea that its main body was already complete. They do not, however, show where the ceremony took place, and the state of construction could have changed in the six years before it. A more precise answer would require a record that names the part of the church where the ceremony took place, or a reliable participant’s account that can be related to a plan from February 1831. None of the archival or museum publications examined provides such a combination.

What do the parish register and Pushkin’s letters leave unsaid?

The marriage records establish the event, the people involved and the parish; they do not trace anyone’s movements inside the church. Even an authentic wedding entry therefore cannot, by itself, confirm a story about a particular side chapel, where each guest stood, or the appearance of the still unfinished main space. Pushkin’s letter of 1832 is valuable for its closeness to the event, but it too names neither the refectory nor the narthex.

Why did the wedding take place only in February 1831?

The prospective marriage was being discussed about ten months before it was entered in the parish register. In a letter to his parents dated 6–11 April 1830 Pushkin announced his intention to marry: he had already obtained the consent of Natalia Goncharova and her mother, and now sought his parents’ blessing. The poet mentioned financial difficulties but named neither a date nor a church for the wedding. That autumn, Pushkin went to Boldino to settle property matters. In a letter to Natalia Goncharova dated 9 September 1830 he linked the delay to the need to formalise the division of property and feared that quarantine measures would prevent a swift return to Moscow. These letters document obstacles before the wedding. Later accounts of omens concern the ceremony itself and do not explain why the wedding took place only in February 1831.

In his notes on Pushkin’s letters, Boris Modzalevsky compared the correspondence with accounts by contemporaries. Two days before the wedding, Bulgakov wrote to his brother about rumours in Moscow that the marriage might once again fall through. He did not claim that it had; rather, his letter reflects the uncertainty people felt before the event. The parish register entry for 18 February settles the question by recording that the marriage took place. Letters written by contemporaries before the wedding therefore help us understand the anxious wait, but their speculation cannot be used as evidence of a cancelled ceremony or a secret change of wedding date.

Later recollections describe a cross falling, a candle going out or a ring being dropped during the ceremony. Modzalevsky records differing versions of these episodes, passed on years later by various people. Their historical standing differs from that of the clergy’s record: they are memories and retellings, not a record of what every witness saw. Anyone recounting these episodes should say who recorded them and when, and should draw no conclusions from them about the ceremony’s precise location. In establishing where Pushkin and Goncharova married, such details cannot take the place of the parish register and the church’s construction history.

How are the church and the house on Arbat Street connected?

After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds went to the flat the poet had rented at 53 Arbat Street. According to the A. S. Pushkin State Museum, the lease for part of the Khitrovo house was signed on 23 January 1831. It covered rooms on the first floor, mezzanine rooms and service rooms for six months. The agreement confirms that the rented home had been found and prepared before the wedding.

The memorial flat's exhibition tells the Moscow side of this story: the museum has a room devoted to the wedding ceremony and traces the lease, the Goncharov family, Pushkin's delay in Boldino and the first months of the marriage. Its recreated interiors draw on surviving evidence; they are not the untouched rooms of February 1831. The museum explicitly describes the restoration and the opening of the new exhibition on 6 June 2024, so the display should be understood as a research-based reconstruction, not a snapshot of the past.

How does the archival record carry the story forward to the house on Arbat Street?

The lease, which the Moscow archives describe alongside the parish register, was signed on 23 January 1831. The A. S. Pushkin State Museum specifies what was included in the rented part of the house: rooms on the first floor, mezzanine rooms, a kitchen, a stable and a carriage shed. The rent was two thousand roubles in paper money for six months. These details reveal the practical arrangements made before the wedding, beyond the image of a picturesque ‘newlyweds’ flat’. The museum also explains that the owners remained in Oryol during the cholera outbreak, while the landlady's sister, Nadezhda Safonova, handled the paperwork on the Khitrovo family's behalf. The archival signature thus belongs to an ordinary transaction completed before the wedding ceremony.

The museum does not give an exact date for Pushkin's move into the Khitrovo house. A letter to Nikolai Krivtsov dated 10 February 1831 establishes only that the poet was already using the Arbat address for correspondence by that date. The subsequent sequence is: the lease on 23 January, the letter on 10 February, a gathering of friends on the 17th, the wedding ceremony and dinner on the 18th, and a family ball on the 27th. In Boris Modzalevsky's notes the ceremony is scheduled for the evening; the museum's dating of the reception to the same day fits this sequence. Keeping the events in order avoids a common mistake: treating the dinner on the eve of the wedding, the wedding reception and the ball nine days later as a single celebration. According to the museum's chronology, the couple left for Tsarskoye Selo on 15 May 1831. They lived in the Khitrovo house for about three months, although the lease was for six.

The museum lists the house's guests and distinguishes the events by date. According to its chronology, Pavel Nashchokin, Pyotr Vyazemsky and his son Pavel welcomed the newlyweds at the Arbat house after the ceremony; the poet's brother Lev oversaw the wedding dinner. The first family ball took place later, on 27 February. Eyewitness recollections of the newlyweds' mood help show how the guests experienced the occasion, but tell us nothing further about the church's layout. By contrast, the lease and the letter bearing the Arbat address document verifiable steps Pushkin took before the wedding.

What did a wedding guest see after leaving the church?

Prince P. P. Vyazemsky left a personal recollection of the newlyweds' return from the wedding ceremony. In the published account he says that after the marriage ceremony he went with Pavel Nashchokin to the poet's flat to welcome the newlyweds with an icon. Vyazemsky vividly recalled the cosy drawing room, its lilac velvet-effect wallpaper and a collection of Kirsha Danilov's verse kept there. This is a rare account by someone involved in the wedding itself, but it describes the welcome at the Khitrovo house and the conversations there, not the church's layout.

The museum draws on Pavel Vyazemsky's recollection to recreate the Arbat drawing room. Here, the testimony serves its purpose: an eyewitness described a particular interior, and his words helped reconstruct it. It would be a mistake to assume the same level of detail about the church. In the published passage, Vyazemsky mentions neither the narthex, the refectory nor a side chapel, although he does speak of returning after the ceremony. The absence of these details does not prove he knew nothing about them; it simply limits what can be drawn from this recollection.

What can you see at the church, and what does its present appearance leave unproven?

Near Nikitsky Gate, you can see the refectory section of the newer Greater Ascension Church and, in today's square, the site of the earlier church. The present-day interior, however, cannot show where Pushkin and Goncharova stood: the main body of the church was completed after their wedding, and its furnishings were altered later. The 2024 heritage protection document places the old bell tower where the monument to Alexei Tolstoy was later erected; the tower was demolished in 1937.

Why do sources give different dates for the church's completion?

The Greater Ascension Church's construction history cannot be reduced to a single year. A 2018 archaeological report gives 1845 as the year construction ended. The 2024 heritage protection document It dates the main sections to 1798–1848, places the completion of construction in the 1840s, and separately mentions a consecration in 1840 and the installation of heating throughout the building in 1848. A parish history dates the solemn consecration to 1848. These dates do differ across the sources; selecting one without explanation would conceal the discrepancy.

The discrepancy may reflect different stages of work: the building of walls and vaults, interior finishing, the installation of heating and a separate church ceremony. But the available texts do not allow every difference to be explained with confidence in this way; the two reports give different dates for the consecration. For the question of the wedding, an earlier milestone is decisive: the refectory was consecrated in 1816, while work on the main body continued after 18 February 1831. This article therefore says that it ‘was still being completed in the 1840s’, without treating the disputed date of final completion as evidence of where the wedding ceremony took place.

Why can’t the church’s present appearance be taken as its interior in 1831?

Key features of the church’s present exterior took shape after the wedding. The heritage protection document dates final approval of the building plans to late 1831 and completion of the main building to the 1840s. By then, the old church had been demolished, although its tent-roofed bell tower still stood separately. What visitors see is the result of years of work by architects and builders, not the church as it stood on one February evening. Even though the present refectory occupies a historic part of the new church, both its exterior and interior have undergone later alterations.

The changes became especially pronounced in the twentieth century. According to a 2024 expert assessment, the church was closed in 1931 and then transferred to the Central State Restoration Workshops. After its closure, the iconostasis and part of the interior decoration were destroyed; in 1937, the old freestanding bell tower was demolished. As the building was adapted for other uses, its interiors were altered and new windows were cut through the walls. Restoration work from 1987 to 1990 recovered some of the building’s architectural character, but did not literally recreate the setting of the Pushkins’ wedding. The surviving structure and reconstructed details must be considered separately.

The experts list load-bearing walls, piers, vaults, openings and the building’s overall form among its protected features, including the refectory with its two side chapels. This means the building’s history can be studied through its physical fabric, not only through written accounts. Yet the description of protected features spans several phases of construction between 1798 and 1848 and takes later restoration into account. It does not mark the spot where Pushkin and Goncharova stood. The conclusion drawn here from the documents is limited: the present space helps visitors understand the church’s scale and layout, but the participants’ positions can be established only from a source that explicitly links the ceremony to a plan showing the building as it was in early 1831.

The archival parish register confirms that Pushkin and Goncharova were married at Nikitsky Gate on 18 February 1831. The heritage protection documents associate the ceremony with the part of the new building then in use: the 2018 document identifies the narthex, while the 2024 document presents that location as a possibility without naming a precise room. The first account offers a specific point of reference; the second leaves open the question of where the newlyweds stood. Bulgakov’s use of the parish’s old name calls for attention to the language of the time, but does not itself establish the ceremony’s location within the church.

The route tours of places associated with Pushkin passes the Church of the Great Ascension and leads to the memorial flat on Arbat Street, where the wedding dinner was held after the ceremony.

Sources

1. State A. S. Pushkin Museum: Memorial Apartment on the Arbat
2. Historical and Cultural Heritage Assessment Report for the Church of the Great Ascension, 2 April 2024
3. Historical and Cultural Heritage Assessment Report for the Site at the Nikitsky Gates, 22 August 2018
4. Letter from A. S. Pushkin to his parents, 6–11 April 1830
5. Letter from A. S. Pushkin to N. N. Goncharova, 9 September 1830
6. Letter from A. S. Pushkin to N. I. Krivtsov, 10 February 1831
7. Letter from A. S. Pushkin to N. N. Pushkina, 25 September 1832
8. State Register of Unique Documents of the Moscow Archival Fund
9. B. L. Modzalevsky: notes on A. S. Pushkin’s letters of 1831–1833, the pre-marriage inquiry and a letter from A. Ya. Bulgakov
10. A Moscow sacred site: the Church of the Great Ascension, a parish history publication