Cathedral of the Saviour-on-the-Spilt-Blood
This church stands out as one of the unique structures in Petersburg,
and for a peculiar reason. When Peter the Great established the
city of Petersburg, he specifically built it as the new capital
of the Russian Empire, and he chose a spot close to Europe so
as to bring European cultural trends closer to Russia - thus Petersburg's
famous nickname as Peter's "window onto the west." For
most of the city's history, indigenous Russian architectural styles
were specifically forbidden, and even the Russian Orthodox Cathedrals,
while traditional in their 'onion' domes and in the appointments
of their interiors, were built to reflect Western architectural
styles. A very specific exception was made in the case of the
Cathedral of the Saviour-on-the-Spilt-Blood, which bears a rough
resemblance to the famous Cathedral of Basil the Blessed in Moscow's
Red Square. On this site a terrorist from the revolutionary organisation
People's Will mortally wounded Tsar Alexander II on March 1, 1881,
by tossing a bomb at his feet. His son, Alexander III, began construction
of the memorial church in 1883 and it was completed in 1907 during
the reign of Nicholas II. Alexander II was actually quite a progressive
emperor who had worked for substantial reform, but he fell victim
to discontent which had simmered for years past; and so it was
something of a national tragedy, that a good Emperor who tried
to help his people was seen as a 'symbol' by discontented elements
in society, and so met a violent death at the hands of a terrorist.
The Cathedral was designed and built in honour of the martyred
Emperor. A curiosity in the Cathedral's placement is rather amusing.
It is located by the Griboyedov Canal (formerly the Catherine
Canal) near the Stable Square. After the cathedral was designed
in one of the styles traditional to Russian Orthodox churches,
it was decided that the central dome should rise directly over
the spot where the assassin's bomb exploded; this involved shifting
the cathedral's location a little, towards the canal. The two
peculiarities resulting from this are: firstly, it was necessary
to construct a small platform jutting slightly into the canal
to accommodate one of the entrances to the cathedral; secondly,
even having done this, this entrance could not be used as an entrance
- so there is the visually enigmatic effect of seeing what is
clearly a canopied doorway, but in place of the door there is
simply a mosaic (if memory serves me right, of the Crucifixion).
The inside of the church has just reopened after 27 years of restoration
(and 90 years after its first opening in 1907) although the restoration
works are still going on. The church was badly damage, first by
the communist, they used it as a storage and sold of the interiors
to the west and second by the Nazis.
