The Church of Boris and Gleb in its current form was built in 1761 with funding from local merchants. It is a typical example of provincial baroque: a single-domed church in the shape of a ship, consisting of a high octagon, a gabled refectory, and a three-tiered bell tower with a spire. The following year, a small pillarless church of Dmitry of Rostov was added on the north side, where services were held during the cold season. After its closure in 1928, the church buildings were used as a workshop and garage. Deprived of their domes and bell tower, they are rarely mentioned in guidebooks and do not attract tourists' attention. According to local legend, the stone church was erected by Prince Konstantin Vsevolodovich on the site of an ancient wooden church of Kirik and Ulita. This place, where the Pizherma River flows into the lake, is the core of the urban settlement and the oldest part of Rostov. It was here, during the baptism of Rus, that the residents of the city were baptized. The Laurentian Chronicle dates the construction of the church to the years 1214-1218. P.A. Rappoport believes that the brick building was constructed by the same crew that worked at the Knyaginino Monastery in Vladimir and the Spassky Monastery in Yaroslavl. The first Russian saints were dedicated by the princes of the Rurik dynasty in palace churches in Vyshgorod, Grodno, and Kideksha. In the 1970s, N.N. Voponin, studying the church, discovered shards of broken brick but did not attach significance to it. In 1986, Oleg Ioannisyans, head of the Architectural and Archaeological Expedition of the State Hermitage, concluded that beneath the 18th-century church, a pre-Mongol church made of brick had been preserved. The discovered brick was broken, indicating its reuse. Ioannisyans linked the found church to a mention in the Nikon Chronicle about the construction of a church at the prince's court in 1287. The masonry of this four-pillar church with a single apse is characterized by a primitive roughness, uncharacteristic of pre-Mongol architecture. The building was constructed from rubble using formwork and faced with thin white stone slabs. Ioannisyans' discovery refuted the thesis about the cessation of stone construction in the northeast of Rus after the Mongol invasion until the times of Ivan Kalita. This is the earliest surviving structure erected in Rus after the Mongol-Tatar invasion. Since the ancient church sank into the marshy ground and was buried during the construction of the rampart in the 17th century, Ioannisyans planned to arrange a museum in two tiers. However, local specialists suggested restoring the monument to a state of external splendor, painting the facades, gilding the domes, and erecting scaffolding on the building. The unresolved issue of the forms of restoration of the monument led to its conservation in a ruined state, in which it remains today.