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The cathedral, dedicated to the Holy Proto-Apostles Peter and Paul and since 1858 called Petropavlovsky, was built between 1712 and 1733 to the design of Domenico Trezzini. Consecrated on June 29, 1733, the cathedral ranks among the most remarkable monuments of Baroque architecture. It is a rectangular structure, elongated from west to east. The dome, on the eastern end, is crowned with a cupola, while the bell-tower with a gilded spire is placed over the west entrance. The bell-tower is 122,5 high, and since its creation has been the tallest architectural point in the city.
The interior of the cathedral, striking for its huge church hall, is divided by faux marbre piers with gilded capitals into three aisles topped by cross-vaults. The painted plafonds feature representations of angels. The upper parts of the walls are decorated with eighteen large panneaux on Gospel subjects. Seven of them were executed by the artists Andrei Matveyev, V. Ignatyev and Georg Gsell in 1726-31, the other eleven are of a later date. On one of the piers of the left-hand row, opposite the iconostasis, is a wooden carved platform with a canopy over it. By the opposite pier is the Royal Place where the emperor stood while attending services in the cathedral.
St. Peter's and St. Paul's ranked high among St. Petersburg churches not only as the principal cathedral of the city but also as the burial place of the Imperial House of Romanov. The tradition of burying members of the ruling dynasty in a church was based on the age-old belief in the divinity of royal power. This practice was widespread in all Christian countries. In pre-Petrine Russia grand princes and tsars were buried in the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in the Moscow Kremlin. When, in 1712, the capital was transferred from Moscow to St. Petersburg, this role was accorded to the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Its creation in St. Petersburg was to underline Peter's new priorities and demonstrate the opening of a new era in Russian history.
One of the first researchers into the cathedral's history wrote: "... the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Moscow is justly called the 'Sanctuary of Russian History' as it contains the relics of our Grand Princes from Ivan Kalita ... to Tsar Ioann Alexeyevich. The Peter and Paul Cathedral also deserves this name as it has served as the burial place of the August Persons of the Russian Imperial House since the foundation of St. Petersburg."
In the context of world history, the creation of a sepulchre in St. Petersburg continued the tradition of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who built the Church of the Holy Apostles in his new capital Constantinople in the fourth century with the intention of using it as his mausoleum and a sepulchre for his entire dynasty. In the sixth century, Clovis, the Merovingian ruler of the Franks, erected the Basilica of the Apostles Peter and Paul on the left bank of the Seine, which eventually became his sepulchre. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Peter I, too, intended the newly built cathedral of his capital to be a burial place for the Imperial House of Romanov.
For a period of two centuries all Russian rulers from Peter I to Alexander III (with the exception of Peter II and Ivan VI Antonovich) and members of their families were laid to rest in the cathedral.
The first to be buried in the Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul (this wooden church was demolished when construction of the stone cathedral began) was Catherine, Peter I's daughter who died in 1708 at the age of eighteen months. In 1715 the wife of Peter's son Alexei, Crown Princess Charlotte-Christine-Sophie, was interred in the cathedral which was still under construction. Later Alexei was buried next to her.
As Peter I died before the cathedral was completed, a temporary wooden chapel was built within its walls to a design by Domenico Trezzini. It was to this chapel that on March 10, 1725, the bodies of Peter I and his daughter Natalia, who died on March 4, were conveyed with due honours. Both coffins were placed on the catafalque under a canopy upholstered with golden cloth. In 1727 the coffin with the body of Peter's wife, Catherine I, joined the other two.
In May 1731 Empress Anna Ioannovna ordered that the remains of Peter I and his wife be committed to the earth. As the St. Petersburg Gazette wrote, "the interment took place on Saturday, May 29, after 10 a.m., and was accompanied by a special funeral ceremony. Gentlemen from the General Staff, the Admiralty and the Government were present. During the emplacement of the coffins into the imperial crypt prepared for the occasion a salute of fifty-one shots was fired from the fortress walls." The exact date of their daughter's burial is unknown. After the fire of 1756, when the wooden dome and spire of the cathedral were destroyed and the interior was badly damaged, the idea arose to turn the cathedral into the mausoleum of Peter the Great.
A contest for the best design was won by Academician Mikhail Lomonosov, who proposed to put the tombs of Peter I and Catherine I on a pedestal with silver framing and next to it their sculptural portraits, also on pedestals. The walls and dome of the cathedral were to be decorated with seventeen mosaics depicting important episodes from their life. The design also envisaged two large mosaics on the southern and northern walls: The Battle of Poltava and The Capture of Azov. But for various reasons, this project was never realised.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries only reigning monarchs were buried in the cathedral. Members of their families were interred in the Church of the Annunciation in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and some other places. But from 1831, by order of Nicholas I, grand dukes and their families were also buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
In the first half of the eighteenth century tombstones over the graves were made of white alabaster. In the 1770s, when the cathedral was reconstructed and restored, they were replaced with marble ones, cut from Ruskeala (Karelian) marble. The tombs were covered by golden brocade trimmed with ermine, and sewn-on coats of arms on top. On ordinary days slip-covers of dark green or black cloth decorated with golden braid and bearing the monogram of the deceased were spread over the tombs. In the 1840s and 1850s tombs of white Italian marble began to appear.
In March 1865 Alexander II visited the cathedral and was displeased by the shabby look of the tombstone coverings. He inquired if there were any particular church rules concerning these coverings. There were none. As the tombs were also in a poor condition he ordered that all the tombs which had fallen into decay or were not marble be replaced with marble ones after the pattern of those recently installed in the cathedral.
The architect Auguste Poirot designed fifteen tombs of white Italian marble. They were placed on the graves of Peter I, Catherine I, Anna Petrovna, Anna Ioannovna, Elizaveta Petrovna, Peter III, Catherine II, Paul I, Maria Fedorovna, Alexander I, Elizaveta Alexeyevna, Konstantin Pavlovich, Alexandra Maximilianovna, Alexandra Mikhailovna and Anna Mikhailovna. The tombs of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich and Grand Duchesses Alexandra and Maria Nikolayevna were cleaned and polished. In 1867 when this work was completed a decree was issued terminating the use of any tombstone coverings.
The tombstones have the shape of a quadrangular prism. The lid bears a large bronze cross coated with pure gold. A bronze plaque is attached to the side wall of the tomb, indicating the name, title, date and place of birth and death and the date of burial. In addition to the cross the tombs of the emperors and empresses bear four bronze coats of arms of the Russian Empire at the corners, and the inscriptions on the plaques also include the date of their accession to the throne. The inscriptions on the bronze plaques were written by the Russian historian Nikolai Ustrialov.
When installing the new tombs, it was decided to attach nine bronze plaques to the walls near the graves which had no tombs. These were the graves of five children of Peter the Great who died in infancy, his son Tsarevich Alexei, his sister Maria Alexeyevna and his daughters-in-law - Charlotte-Christine and Marfa Matveyevna. The last four were buried under the bell-tower of the cathedral.
In 1887 Alexander III gave orders to replace the white marble tombs on the graves of his parents, Alexander II and Maria Alexandrovna, with more splendid ones. Solid blocks of green Altai jasper (for Alexander II) and pink Ural rhodonite (for Maria Alexandrovna) were used for the purpose. Designed by the architect Alexander Gunn, the new tombs were made at the Peterhof Lapidary Works over a period of eighteen years. They were installed in the cathedral in February 1906.
By the end of the nineteenth century there were forty-six graves in the Peter and Paul Cathedral which left practically no room for new ones. Therefore, in 1896, construction of the Grand-Ducal Vault was started on the adjacent grounds. Formally named the Burial Vault for the Members of the Royal Family, or the New Burial Vault at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, it was built by Leonty Benois and Anton Tomishko between 1896 and 1908 to the design of the architect David Grimm.
The Grand-Ducal Vault was consecrated on November 5, 1908. First the altar was dedicated to the Saintly and Most Orthodox Prince Alexander Nevsky, the patron saint of St. Petersburg, and only after that the building itself. Three days later, the first interment took place there: Alexander II's son, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, was buried near the southern part of the sanctuary. Between 1909 and 1912 the remains of several members of the royal family were brought from the cathedral to the vault. The reburial took several days because the crypts were smaller than the shrines.
In 1916 the vault contained thirteen graves, eight of which had been transferred from the cathedral. Unlike the cathedral, the vault had no tombs. A grave stone made of white marble was placed on floor level; the title, name, date and place of birth and death, the burial date all were engraved on the stone.
In 1859 the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul transferred from the jurisdiction of the eparchy to the Building Office of the Ministry of the Imperial Court, and in 1883, with its clergy, it was assigned to the Ecclesiastic Administration of the Court.
The special status the cathedral enjoyed accounted for a number of essential amendments in its ecclesiastic activity. Such Christian sacraments as baptism or wedding were never performed in it. Burial service rites were performed for the members of the Imperial family alone and only in separate cases were exceptions made for the fortress's commandants who were interred in the Commandants' Cemetery by the cathedral wall.
In 1917 there were more than a thousand wreaths on the walls and pillars and by the graves in the cathedral; for example, at the grave of Alexander III alone they numbered 674. Icons and icon-lamps were practically at every grave. Silver, gold and bronze medals, commemorating various important dates, lay on the tombs of Peter I, Alexander I, Nicholas I and Alexander II. In September-October 1917 thirty-one boxes "with icons, crosses, church plate, books, etc." were sent to Moscow following the orders of the Provisional Government. Unfortunately, many of those treasures have not been traced so far.
On May 14, 1919, the cathedral and the vault were closed, their doors sealed up by order of the commandant of the fortress. On April 21, 1922, the church treasures were confiscated on the pretext of helping the starving. This took place in the presence of the commandant, the church-warden, a representative of the State Museum Administration and the official in charge of the cathedral property.
According to one school of thought the tsars' crypts were opened in search of imperial treasures, though no evidence has yet been found in the archives to prove this. The only known fact is that the grave of Alexandra Georgiyevna, the wife of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich (shot in 1919), was opened in 1939. She was born a Greek princess and on the request of the Greek government her remains were transferred to her homeland.
In 1927 the cathedral was given over to the Museum of the Revolution and since 1954 it has been under the authority of the State Museum of the History of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Quite a different fate befell the Grand-Ducal Vault. In December 1926 the committee inspecting the building came to the conclusion that "since none of the bronze ornaments nor the screens of the sanctuary have any historical or artistic value, they are to be melted down". The ornaments were removed and their ultimate fate remains unknown.
In 1930, when the building was allotted to the Central Book Chamber, it was planned to move the remains of the buried to another premises. All the graves were opened but no reburial took place. After the Second World War the building was used for some time as the storehouse of a paper-mill. In 1954 it too was given to the Museum of the History of Leningrad. In the 1960s the vault underwent repair and restoration following which it housed an exhibition entitled The History of the Construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The exhibition was dismantled in May 1992 in connection with the burial of Alexander II's great-grandson, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, and the beginning of restoration work. When this work is completed the building will be restored to its original state. And in 1998, the last imperial family was buried here.
