The first stone tent church in Russian architecture, the unquestioned masterpiece, the Ascension Church was built on the order of Grand Prince Vasili III in his own village Kolomenskoe near Moscow шт honour of the birth of a long-awaited heir - future prince Ivan IV the Terrible. The lower part of the construction, put on the high ground floor, has a crosswise form passing into an octagon. A high tent that dawns upon the inner space without pillars leans on this form.The cathedral having an extra centrical composition and an expressive skyline is surrounded with a double-deck gallery with solemn stairs.
Cathedral is notable for lots of details having a Renaissant character while Gables decorating the facade evidence the familiarity of the architect with the Gothic motives. Italian brick, particularities of dimentional and spatial composition, characteristic features as well as connection of the building to centric cathedrals of Italy which quote the idea of Rotunda of Church of the Holy Sepulchre, allow to attribute this unique church to one on Italian architects working at court of Vasili III. By hypothesis of S. Pod'yapolsky this architect could be Petrok Maly - author of the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow Kremlin, linked on Ivan the Great Bell Tower, and also of walls and towers of Kitay-gorod.