Petersburg churches

Route and content of the tour

In program

The second building built in the new Russian capital is the Peter and Paul Orthodox Cathedral. And next to it, almost at the same time, a church for Protestants was being built. This is the whole of the Petrine era.

By the very beginning of the 19th century, large stone cathedrals and churches stood around Nevsky Prospekt, which still stand in their places. The Finnish Church of St. Mary, the German Evangelical Church of St. Peter, the Catholic Cathedral of Catherine of Alexandria, the Swedish Church of St. Catherine, the Armenian Church. Opposite these remarkable non-Orthodox structures is one dilapidated Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. This is what must be understood when speaking about the history of the construction of the Kazan Cathedral. By the way, it was not conceived at all the way we see it now.

Did you know that the current St. Isaac's Cathedral is the fourth version of the Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia at this place (and, by the way, the first version was not quite here)?

We will get acquainted with the Nikolsky Naval Cathedral, consecrated in 1760 in the presence of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. We will visit the Smolny Cathedral, which is also closely associated with the name of Peter's youngest daughter Elizabeth, and we will fast forward a century to the Soviet era, when Andrei Zhdanov, the head of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, built there for himself one of the most reliable bunkers during the Great Patriotic War.