Church of the Transfiguration on Kovalevo

According to the Novgorod chronicles, the Church of the Transfiguration on Kovalevo was built in 1345 by order of the boyar Ontsifor Zhabin. It was painted in the summer of 1380, shortly before the Battle of Kulikovo. In 1941–1943 the monument was completely destroyed by Nazi forces. Restorers and archaeologists began work on Kovalevo Hill only in 1962, excavating with extreme care because unexploded mines and shells remained in the rubble. In 1965, V. B. Grekov and his wife V. B. Grekova began the rescue of the Kovalevo frescoes. The paintings, among the most distinctive works of 14th-century Russian art, had been created by a team of Serbian artists in a single summer season. By 1973 every handful of soil had been sorted, yielding about 500 boxes of shattered fresco pieces—around 100,000 fragments. In total, around 350,000 fragments were assembled, from which almost 200 square meters of frescoes were reconstructed to varying degrees. The project became the first experiment of its kind in rescuing a destroyed monument of monumental painting. In 1973 the church itself was rebuilt in its historic form to a design by L. E. Krasnorechyev.