On the main square of city along the central street there is a group of Churches marking the right-hand, southern edge of a cluster of seventeenth-century wooden Churches which stood in a line parallel with the rows of trading stalls and were burnt down in 1719.
The present Church of the Resurrection stands on the site of a wooden, tent-shaped Church of the same name. Its stone bell-tower was built in the same style as the old Church and, like the latter, also became the vertical focal point of the surrounding ensemble.
The attractive ensemble of the main Church of the Resurrection (built in 1720 and restored in 1958 by Elizaveta Karavayeva), and the small heated Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Kazan (built in 1739) seem to reflect something of the old group of wooden Churches. This is evident in the way the architect concentrated on the bell-tower, the most important element in the ensemble. The sides of its slender octagon mounted on a firm, square socle are decorated from top to bottom with deep niches lined with green and polychrome glazed tile. There is a continuous band of tiling around the base of the belfry and a row of rounded dumpy red alternating balusters with green glazed tiles in the cornice along the top. All this produces a rich interplay of light, shade and colour.
The eighteenth-century designer was continuing in the style of the old Suzdal craftsmen who built the Holy Gates at the Convent of the Intercession at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the famous Suzdal architects, Mamin, Gryaznov and Shmakov (late seventeenth-century). There is little decoration on the Church itself, which belongs to the two-pillar type that we can see in the earlier Church of Saint Lazarus. Its windows have no ornamental surrounds and the clear white walls, crowned with a cornice of tiny, pattern-like kokoshniks, set off the rich adornments of the bell-tower.
The Church is adjoined on its west wall by a single-storey Church porch adorned with the typical Suzdal cornice with little dumpy balusters and rows of indented brickwork. The octagonal dome drum with tiny pediments is painted yellow and reddish-brown echoing the colours of the bell-tower. The Church's south wall has a beautiful main entrance porch with round columns, pendant arches and a pediment.
The modest, heated Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Kazan with its simple north portico has an interesting crest of open metalwork running along the ridge of the roof. This attractive feature with its simple pattern is borrowed from folk art.