About The Temples Of Saint-Petersburg

The St.Isaac's Cathedral

The first wooden cathedral dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmathy was built in 1710. Peter I honoured this Saint whose name-day - the 30-th of May - coincided with the birthday of the tzar himself. In the 18-th century two other stone cathedrals were erected. And in 1818 after Au.Montferrand design the construction of the present building began, and it lasted for 40 years - till 1858.

The cathedral is 101.5 m high and it is well seen from Petergoff. On the porticoes and around the dome drum 72 monolith columns are installed weighing from 114 to 64 tones. The interior area of the cathedral is 4600 sq.m. It can accommodate up to 12000 praying persons.

The interior decorations include painting, mozaics, multicoloured decorative stones. The most precious materials were spent on its inner ornamentation: lapis-lazuli, malachite, porphyry and the marbles of different hues. Bronze-cast and guilded parts add to the inside decor.

It is inside the lateral porticos that one feels the grandeur of the edifice. The pediment combinations are beautiful, and so are the statues, belfries and the dome rotunda.

The granite giant of the cathedral magnificently elevates over Petersburg, attracting attention from far away by its wonderful dome guilding.

At present the cathedral is open for visitirs as a museum.

The Kazansky Cathedral

Back on Nevsky Avenue, next to the Stroganov Palace is one of the finest architectural monuments in Saint-Petersburg the Kazansky Cathedral, designed and erected in 1801-1811 by the architect Andrey Voronikhin. The architect has created a magnificent edifice (height- 71.6m, length- 72.5m), with its main building facing onto Nevsky Avenue. The cathedral with its semicircular Corinthian colonade (96 thirteen-metre-high columns) is the dominant feature in one of the most elegant squares of the city.

Huge bas-reliefs, approximately 15 metres long and almost two metres high, depicting Biblical subjects, grace the two butt-ends of the building facing into Nevsky Avenue. The bas-relief above the left butt-end of the building was executed by the famous Russian sculptor Ivan Martos on the subject Moses Parting the Waters, the one above the right butt-end is a depiction of the Brozen Serpent by the sculptor Ivan Prokofyev.

The cathedral's highly artistic interior decoration consisting of 56 monolithic red granite columns and a mosaic floor composed of multifarious Karelian marbles are bound to produce an imforgettable impression on you. The cathedral's interior is the work of Vladimir Borovikovsky, Orest Kiprensky and other outstanding Russian artists of the beginning of the 19th century.