The article deals with the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Urals from the late 18 th century until now. For the purpose of detailed reconstruction the authors borrowed the close-up method from cinematic approach and adopted it to historical-anthropological research. The Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Severouralsk (Petropavlovsk until 1944), its parish and priests were chosen as the object for reconstructing orthodox elements in the Urals's religious landscape from the late 18 th to the 21 st century. Since the history of the church is poorly reflected in the written sources, we had to rely on field data in our reconstruction - interviews with residents and the parish members and documents from private and archival collections, supplemented by materials from local newspapers and regional studies museum. The Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul was founded by the Urals citizen and merchant Maxim Pokhodyashin along with the iron and copper producing plant in the late 18 th century. The initially wooden construction was rebuilt after the fire in the Baroque style and then the church became both the ornament of the settlement and the center of religious life for large and most extensive of the parishes in the territory of the Yekaterinburg diocese until its closure in 1930. In Soviet times, the church building was used as a cultural center, storage and workshop and as a dorm for the exiled kulaks during collectivization and to the resettled people from the central regions of the country during WWII. It completely lost its religious function in the 1960s. However, religious life of the population was maintained even in a time when the church was closed and no priests were around. The revival of church life began in the 1970s. The research allowed the authors to reconstruct the circumstances of the church's closing, the fate of its clergy, stages of destruction and reconstruction of the church building and the evolution of religious life in the Soviet period.