The Epiphany Cathedral of the Epiphany Abraham Monastery was founded around 1080 by the venerable Abraham. Initially, the temple was wooden, but during the era of Ivan the Terrible, it was replaced with a stone structure. According to legend, the tsar visited the monastery and took with him the staff of Saint John the Theologian on his campaign to Kazan. After the victory, by his order and with funds from the royal treasury, a stone cathedral was built and decorated in 1553 in honor of the Epiphany of the Lord. Ivan the Terrible attended the consecration of the cathedral and gifted it several icons of the Korsun style. To this day, only three of them have survived: the Dormition of the Mother of God, the Savior on the Cloth, and the Hodegetria. These icons were located behind the choir on the pillars. There is another version that the tsar took the staff during the consecration of the cathedral when Kazan had already been conquered, and he took it with him to subdue the Astrakhan kingdom. The story of the miraculous staff is reflected in the dedications of the chapels of the cathedral: one is dedicated to Abraham of Rostov, another to John the Theologian, the third to the patron of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, the prophet John the Baptist, and the fourth to the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple. The last chapel was abolished after the construction of the Sdelny Church in honor of this feast, of which nothing has survived. The Epiphany Cathedral of the Abraham Monastery, with its complex composition and architectural details, resembles St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, built almost simultaneously. The main model for the builders of the cathedral was the Rostov Assumption Cathedral of the early 16th century. The Epiphany Cathedral inherited from it the proportions between the apses and the main volume, the decoration of the drums with cornices, the cross-shaped form of the pillars, and the two-tiered arrangement of windows. The monastery cathedral of the Epiphany of the Lord absorbed all the best of Russian architecture of that time. The main volume of the cathedral has a cubic shape and is topped with a traditional five-domed structure. The chapel of the venerable Abraham is adorned with a slender tent, characteristic of the 16th century, while the chapel of John the Baptist is crowned with a group of kokoshniks. Above the chapel of John the Theologian, in the 19th century, Rostov stone masons, imitating ancient Russian architects, added a bell tower. Although the Epiphany Cathedral has been rebuilt multiple times, little of the previous architecture remains. The domes have been altered, and instead of helmets, massive bulbs have appeared. Nevertheless, it remains one of the outstanding monuments of architecture of the Rostov school of the 16th-17th centuries. In 1736, the walls of the main volume, the chapel of the venerable Abraham, and the porches were painted. Today, the Epiphany Cathedral is in a state of emergency. The wall paintings of the porches have almost been lost; on one of the walls of the southern porch, only fragments remain that allow understanding of the subjects, while on the western porch, this is no longer possible. The external paintings of the temple have also not survived. The painting of the chapel of the venerable Abraham has suffered greatly from atmospheric effects. Inside the cathedral, the painting has partially survived, but the extent of loss is not so great. The most serious damage occurred in the upper part of the temple. The painting on the three small domes has also not survived. In the northern arm of the cross, part of the vault has collapsed, and in the arch's lock between the northern wall and the northwestern pillar, some bricks have fallen out. Other damages to the cathedral include numerous cracks in the masonry and plaster layer, flaking of the paint layer, and loss of plaster. The greatest number of these is observed on the walls of the altar part, the apse, and the western wall. In addition, the walls of the Epiphany Cathedral are deteriorating. The brickwork of the supporting arches and vaults has severely deformed and collapsed in some places. Restoration work carried out in the 1960s-1970s proved insufficient. The cathedral is at risk of complete destruction under such conditions.