Savior on Spilled Blood, Saint Isaac's and Kazan Cathedral Guide

Although Saint Petersburg was conceived by Peter the Great as a thoroughly European capital, its three most famous churches illustrate the dramatic evolution of Russian ecclesiastical architecture between 1801 and 1907. Within a two-kilometre walk linking the Griboyedov Canal, Nevsky Prospekt, and Saint Isaac's Square, visitors move from Roman-inspired Neoclassicism and French Empire engineering to exuberant late nineteenth-century Russian Revival ornament.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Standing directly on the Griboyedov Canal embankment just north of Arts Square, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, universally known as the Savior on Spilled Blood, marks the exact spot where Emperor Alexander II was mortally wounded by a bomb thrown by members of the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary organisation on 13 March 1881 (1 March Old Style). Ordered by his son Emperor Alexander III and constructed between 1883 and 1907 to a design by architect Alfred Parland and Archimandrite Ignaty (Malyshev), the church deliberately rejected Saint Petersburg's classical idiom in favour of seventeenth-century Moscow and Yaroslavl brick-and-enamel churches, echoing Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Its five domes are clad in gilded copper and jeweller's enamel, while the interior contains more than 7,000 square metres of intricate smalt mosaics executed from cartoons by Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov, and Andrei Ryabushkin. Beneath a jasper-and-rhodonite canopy on the western side of the nave, the original blood-stained cobblestones and iron canal railing from 1881 remain preserved in situ.

Saint Isaac's Cathedral and the Colonnade Walkway

Dominating the skyline south-west of the Admiralty Building, Saint Isaac's Cathedral is the fourth church erected on the site in honour of Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, whose feast day on 30 May coincided with the birthday of Peter the Great. Designed by French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand, construction lasted forty years from 1818 to 1858 because its foundations required thousands of wooden piles driven into the marshy subsoil. Rising 101.5 metres high, its gilded dome dominates the skyline of the city centre; its cast-iron dome frame is plated with roughly 100 kilograms of gold leaf, and its four porticoes are supported by 112 single-piece red granite columns quarried near Vyborg. Inside, the iconostasis is framed by eight fluted columns of green Ural malachite and two columns of deep blue Badakhshan lapis lazuli. A separate ticket gives access to the spiral staircase leading up to the circular drum colonnade, offering one of the clearest elevated views over Palace Square, the Neva River, and the Hotel Astoria on Saint Isaac's Square.

Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt

Directly across Nevsky Prospekt from the Singer House, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan was built between 1801 and 1811 by architect Andrey Voronikhin, a former serf of the Stroganov family educated in Paris. Because Orthodox liturgical canon required the main altar to face east while Emperor Paul I wanted a grand entrance facing north onto Nevsky Prospekt, Voronikhin masked the cathedral's northern flank with a sweeping semicircular colonnade of 96 Pudost travertine Corinthian columns inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's piazza at St. Peter's in Rome. Following the Patriotic War of 1812, Kazan Cathedral became the principal monument to Russia's victory over Napoleon; Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov was buried inside its northern chapel in 1813, and bronze statues of Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly sculpted by Boris Orlovsky were erected on the forecourt in 1837. Today it functions as the active mother cathedral of the Saint Petersburg diocese, with free entry during worship hours.