Few people would recognize the outline of one of the buildings at the Technical University of Agriculture on Oboronnyi Val Square as a former church, but that is indeed what it is.

The wooden Church of the Ascension has stood on this square since the late 17th century.

Due to natural aging and the deterioration of the wood, such churches could not stand for centuries; they were also often completely destroyed by fire.

The next Ascension Church was built in the late 18th century, and it is this church that features in the legend surrounding the 1800 Pasquille, because of which the enraged Emperor Paul I allegedly came close to ordering the destruction of the city of Kharkiv and the deportation of all its inhabitants to Siberia.

You can see what the Ascension Church looked like back then in this old photograph, which was based on a painting from the early 19th century:

In fact, the claim that the emperor intended to destroy Kharkiv is untrue; although a lampoon targeting the emperor was indeed found on the church door and several suspects were exiled to Siberia, the investigation never identified its author.

Historian Nikolai Gorbun concluded that the author of the lampoon was most likely a Pole who had participated in the Kościuszko Uprising and had been exiled to serve in Kharkiv.

The construction of the last stone church on this site was carried out according to a design by Joseph Karpovich (which, according to research by A. Paramonov, was a modified version of Konstantin Ton’s design).

In 1870, the church, which was still under construction, partially collapsed, but construction was ultimately completed in 1876.

After the 1917 Revolution, the Church of the Ascension was closed. The Soviet authorities decided to renovate the building and use it for administrative purposes. The bell tower, domes, and drum towers were demolished. Within the remaining structure, floor partitions were erected and windows were cut into the resulting second floor, after which two additional stories were added to the building. In the 1930s, it housed a sports center; in the postwar period, it served as one of the buildings of the Technical University of Agriculture. The building’s current address is Oboronnyi Val Square, 16.