The city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, founded in 1152 by Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, is famous for its architectural monuments. Holy Trinity Danilov Monastery is the youngest of the surviving monasteries. It was laid down in 1508.
The cathedral has reached the present day without significant alterations. The Church in honor of the Praise of the Virgin was rebuilt in 1695, the building was repaired and changed many times, most significantly in 1720 and 1849. Ancient documents, including floor plans, have been lost. It was decided to study the ancient structure.
A team of physicists and materials scientists from NUST “MISiS” and the Physics Institute named after P.N. Lebedev RAS. They began to study the basements and foundations of the building of the Church of Praise of the Mother of God. The task was difficult – it was difficult to solve it without destruction. It was decided to use the method of muon radiography based on emulsion track detectors, the so-called cosmic rays.
Muons – elementary particles of cosmic origin when they reach sea level, can penetrate into the ground to a depth of 2 km.
At the end of May this year, data on the building of the Praise of the Mother of God was scanned. In the basement of the temple, researchers found voids.
Archaeologists suggest that at the end of the 17th century, the ancient temple was not completely destroyed, and now the basements date back to the 16th century. Some underground cavities may belong to the ancient adjoining cellars, another version is the finding of burial crypts or underground passages there, which previously covered almost all ancient monasteries.
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