This place
St. Isaac`s Cathedral is one of the symbols of St. Petersburg. Its height is 101.5 m, which makes it one of the tallest cupola construction of the world alongside with St Peter in Rome, St Paul in London and Santa Maria in Florence.
The cathedral was designed by the French architect August de Montferrand and took 40 years to be built. From 1858 until 1917, it was the main church of Russia. In 1928, it was turned into a museum, and worships were only revived in 1990.
During WWII, the interior of the cathedral was damaged, but has been completely restored. However, on some columns outside, one can see the traces of the bombardments that occurred during WWII.
Today St. Isaac`s cathedral is one of the most visited museums in the city. The rotunda has a walkway accessible to tourists with a panoramic view over St. Petersburg’s city centre.
Interesting fact: The cathedral is the 4th church built on this place and is named after Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a Byzantine monk who lived in 4th century AD. In the Orthodox Church his feast day is celebrated on May 30th.
Russian Tsar Peter I was born on May 30th and decided to commemorate the Saint by building a church in 1707. It was a small wooden church that was actually rebuilt from a warehouse. In 1712, Peter I married to Catherine I there.
This day in the History of St.Petersburg
On March 1, 1712, Tsar Peter I married his second wife, Catherine I in the first St. Isaac`s church in St. Petersburg. The wedding ceremony was followed by a ball and a gala dinner which took place in a newly built Winter Palace, the first wooden structure and the predecessor of the splendid world-famous royal residence.
The celebration started in the morning and “in the afternoon at 6 o’clock they got up and danced until 11 o’clock; and at 11 they fired rockets and threw bombs and the parade ground was lit, on which the wicks of the Latin letter” Vivat “were laid out, and many other lights were lit …” On the third day the ship named “Ekaterina” was laid down at the shipyards of the Admiralty. The wedding festivities lasted for several days.
Today anyone can organize a wedding ceremony in the cathedral.
