Three cathedrals – three masterpieces

Route and content of the tour

In program

Our walk starts at St. Isaac’s Square at a convenient time (every day except Wednesday). You will be accompanied along the way by a licensed guide — an expert in the history and architecture of St. Petersburg.

The first cathedral on our route is St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Do you know that the present cathedral is the fourth church in honor of St. Isaac of Dalmatia erected in this part of St. Petersburg? The first St. Isaac’s Church was built in the early 18th century, where Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were married.

You will learn:

• What were the first, second and third churches of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, and why did the Rinaldi-Brenna cathedral provoke ridicule from contemporaries?
• When and how was Auguste Montferrand’s current St. Isaac’s Cathedral built, and what does the installation of the Alexander Column on Palace Square have to do with this project?
• What is the height of the St. Isaac’s Cathedral? At what height is the colonnade located? How many steps lead to it?
• When, how and why did the Foucault pendulum appear in the cathedral and where is it now?
• ...and much more about the history and architecture of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

If you wish, we will go up to the colonnade, from where a bird’s-eye view of the Neva and the entire center of St. Petersburg opens up.

Further our way lies along Nevsky Prospekt towards the Kazan Cathedral. This cathedral was built according to the project of architect Andrei Voronikhin for 10 years. The competition for its creation was held during the reign of Paul I, and the temple was laid and consecrated during the reign of Alexander I — both times in the presence of the Emperor.

Kazan Cathedral marks the beginning of the golden period of Russian architecture and is famous for its exterior, which is unusual for Russian architecture. In the plan of the Kazan Cathedral is a “Latin cross”, from the north it is framed by an external colonnade, and in the triangular pediment you can see the Masonic sign — the symbol of the “All-Seeing Eye”. The fact is that the architect Andrei Voronikhin, and the supervisor of construction Count Alexander Stroganov, and Alexander I himself were prominent members of the Masonic lodge.

The third temple on our way is the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, erected in memory of the murdered in 1881 Emperor Alexander II and popularly known as the Savior on the Blood.The solemn consecration and opening of the temple took place on August 19, 1907.

Did you know that:

• Inside the cathedral, a tent sienna was erected over the place where Alexander II was wounded; under it, fragments of the cobblestone sidewalk, sidewalk slabs and the grating of the canal on which the Tsar’s blood was spilled are preserved.
• The Savior on the Blood is crowned by nine domes.Jeweled enamel was used to cover five of them — a unique solution for temple architecture.
• The mosaic decoration of the cathedral is one of the largest collections of monumental mosaics in Europe. Its total area exceeds 7,000 square meters, and mosaic paintings represent 68 subjects on biblical and evangelical themes.
• The bridge spanning the Catherine Canal near the construction site of the church was named after the terrorist Ignatiy Grinevitsky, the murderer of Alexander II, for a long time.

Today the Savior on the Blood is a functioning Orthodox church and at the same time a branch of the state museum-monument “St. Isaac’s Cathedral”.