The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is located in the settlement of Palekh, in Ivanovo Oblast, and is an interesting example of church architecture and traditional Russian architecture. It was built of brick under the direction of master builder Yegor Dubov in 1774.
Next to the church stands a bell tower, which is connected to it by a porch. The tent-roofed bell tower is set on the classic combination of a quadrangle and an octagon - one of the dominant compositions of Russian church architecture. The church itself is very spacious; above it is an attic tier with five domes. The refectory adjoins the main building from the west, and it has three side chapels — St. Nicholas, Kazan, and the Archangel Michael chapel located above the central nave.
The church is notable for its paintings, which adorn both its exterior and interior walls. The mid-19th-century composition "Exaltation of the Cross" on the eastern wall is the work of the Salapin brothers.
The wall paintings inside the church were considered a priceless heritage of Russian culture as early as the beginning of the 20th century. They appeared here in 1807 thanks to the Palekh icon painters, who worked under the direction of Moscow artists, the Sapozhnikov brothers.
In the 1990s, the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross became part of the metochion of the Nikolo-Shartomsky Monastery.
