The Saint Basil’s Cathedral is an incredible church, that is located in Moscow, and is known due to its spectacular design and colors.
Let’s find out more about it!
- It’s formal name is the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed.
- It is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow.
- It is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia.
- The building is currently a museum.
- It is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral.
- It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan.
- It was the city’s tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
- The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel.
- The central chapel was dedicated to the Intercession.
- A tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil).
- In the 16th and 17th centuries, the church, perceived (as with all churches in Byzantine Christianity) as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City.
- This was popularly known as the “Jerusalem” .
- It served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.
- The building is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky.
- It’s a design that has no parallel in Russian architecture.
- Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that “it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century … a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design.”
- The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.
- As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union’s antireligious campaigns.
- It has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928.
- It was completely secularized in 1929.
- It remains a federal property of the Russian Federation.
- The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.
- With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.
- Ivan IV, and the Grand Prince of Moscow—ordered the construction of the cathedral in 1554.
- Ivan, grandson of Ivan the Great, saw the cathedral’s completion in 1561, but upon his death was interred at the nearby Archangel Cathedral.
- Ivan’s goal of military dominance over a central Russian state led to numerous conflicts during his reign.
- Stories and myths abound of Ivan’s raging temper, one of which involves him purposefully blinding the cathedral’s (unnamed) Italian architect so that its design could never be replicated.
- Other legends state that the architects were a pair of Russians named Barma and Posnik, or that they may have been one person.
- Born in 1468, Basil (also called the Blessed, the Beatific, and the Wonderworker of Moscow) was the son of commoners and was trained to be a cobbler.
- He became known for his prophetic powers and for being a “fool for Christ”.
- Following his death in 1557 was buried in the cathedral that would take its name after him.
- The cathedral’s original color was said to be white to match the white stone of the Kremlin, while the domes were gold.
- Starting in the 17th century, the façade and domes began to be painted in the remarkable colors that are seen today.
- The pigment is said to be taken from a Biblical description, in the Book of Revelation, of the Kingdom of Heaven.
- In the city of Jalainur, situated in northeastern Inner Mongolia about 3200 miles west of Moscow and nearly 700 miles north of Beijing, a scale model of the cathedral was built but has never been used as a church.
- Photographer Davide Montoleone documented the strange sight of the building, which houses a children’s science museum and sells fake fossils, during a 2015 visit and noted the beautiful turrets and domes are actually just a shell and, like the fossils, are not real.
- Upon Joseph Stalin’s ascent to the head of the Soviet Union, Saint Basil’s fell out of favor and was in danger of being destroyed in order to make room on Red Square for larger demonstrations and marches.
- Architect Pyotr Baranovsky supposedly sent a telegram to Stalin saying he would rather kill himself than demolish the historic cathedral.
- He subsequently spent five years in prison.
- During that time the state’s attitude changed and Saint Basil’s was spared.
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