Part Three: Evolution of Church Architecture

Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral (1712-33). This was the first ecclesiastical structure in St. Petersburg and became the burial church for the tsars starting with Peter I. Although restored--and greatly changed--by Catherine the Great, even the original design (especially the interior) resembled more a Protestant church than an Orthodox cathedral. According to Hamilton: "The exceptionally tall spire. . . more in proportion to the city than to the church itself, was a visible assertion of Peter's wish that the horizon of St. Petersburg should be the antithesis of Moscow's with its multitudinous painted and gilded cupolas" (267).

Smolny Cathedral (1748 - 1757), begun by Rastrelli, but completed only after his death. The church has a typically Baroque exterior, but the interior is Neoclassical in its simplicity.
Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999

Kazan Cathedral, 1801-1811. Built by Andrey N. Voronikhin, the Neoclassical design was greatly influenced by St. Peter's in Rome.

St. Isaac's Cathedral, 1817-1857. Another Orthodox church in the classical style, designed by Montferrand. The church as it was constructed has the authoritarian character demanded by Tsar Nicholas I.

St. Isaac's Cathedral, Built 1817-1857
Interior of Dome.
Photo by William P. Tishler, 1996

Church of the Resurrection (1883-1907), known popularly as the the "Church on the Blood," as it was built on the site of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Designed by A.A. Parland, this is the lone ecclesiastical representation of the so-called neo-nationalist style, which drew upon specifically Russian motifs and architectural elements in deliberate reaction against the Western European neoclassical canon that had dominated post-Petrine architecture. Thus the church not coincidentally, but quite deliberately, echoes St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999

Church of Christ the Savior, Built 1839-83 on the design of St. Isaac's with some elements of 12th-century Vladimir-Suzdal churches thrown in for good measure. Demolished in 1931 under Stalin's orders, the church was reconstructed in the 1990s on the initiative of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
Photo by William P. Tishler, 1996