Resurrection Arch

People now pass through this arch from Sofiyskaya Square into the Novgorod Kremlin. The opening itself is relatively recent: builders laid it up in eighteen twenty. Its name remained from a structure that vanished long before the present arch appeared.

In twelve ninety-five, the Swedish military leader Sig tried to establish himself in Korela, a trading and defensive center at the mouth of the Vuoksi River on Lake Ladoga, on the site of present-day Priozersk. Fur reached Veliky Novgorod through Korelian Land. Sig's detachment built a fortification there: the people of Novgorod risked losing a border town and a profitable route.

The Novgorod army came to retake Korela. The fortification was destroyed, Sig was killed, and his detachment was defeated. The Swedes lost the place they had occupied, while Korela remained in Novgorod hands.

The following year, Kliment, Archbishop of Novgorod, decided to fulfill a vow made for this victory. Right here, at the western entrance to the Novgorod Kremlin, he built a stone gate church and dedicated it to the Resurrection of Christ. Townspeople passed beneath the church, built in memory of the campaign. For its dedication, the gates, and then the passage tower that rose beside them, were named Resurrection.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the tower had become so dilapidated that Novgorod officials feared it would collapse. The structure was dismantled in seventeen forty-five. Seventy-five years later, the present arch was built in the opening that remained.

Above the passage, neither Kliment's church nor the tall tower with its watch tent remains. What has survived here is their exact location and the name of the church with which the archbishop marked the return of Korela.