The Church of the Ascen­sion was built in 1532 on the impe­r­i­al estate of Kolomen­skoye, near Moscow, to cel­e­brate the birth of the prince who was to become Tsar Ivan IV (‘the Ter­ri­ble‘). One of the ear­li­est exam­ples of a tra­di­tion­al wood­en tent-roofed church on a stone and brick sub­struc­ture, it had a great influ­ence on the devel­op­ment of Russ­ian eccle­si­as­ti­cal archi­tec­ture.