Mount Preobrazhenskaya is well-known and is, in itself, a symbol of the city of Orsk. The mountain was named ‘in honor of the Lord’s Transfiguration, occurring on the day Russians first arrived at the mouth of the river Ori, 6 August 1735.’

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Mountain-top church was built of stone and wood, on a foundation of local red-brown sandstone. The use of log-like cladding (clearly visible on Zhukovsky’s 1837 drawing) instilled a Russian Folk style into the building’s architecture.

The new church served the city’s residents not only as a religious building, but also as a sort of monument in honor of the visit paid by the heir to the throne - Tsaverich Nicholas Aleksandrovich. The church was even named in his honor (dedicated to Nicholas the Miracle Worker).

The revolution takes up a fair few pages in the church’s history, as it determined its future fate. In the summer of 1918, the church’s bell tower, as the highest place in the locality, served as an observation post for the Red Army. Catching wind of this, the White Army, in order to shoot down the soldier observing, fired their guns directly at the tower.

In the 1930’s, all religious buildings in the city were close, and the church was used as a canteen for the oil union. On 15 June 1934, a decree was issued by the city’s committee, regarding the elimination of the mountain-top church, to ‘dismantle the building’.