With our first photostops at The Church Of The Saviour On Spilled Blood and Palace Square done we hopped back on our coach towards the first place we would be properly visiting during our weekend in Saint Petersburg, the gold-domed Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. However, we halted just short of the building in order to take one more quick photostop from the nearby Saint Isaac’s Square. Everyone’s eyes were immediately drawn to the cathedral itself.
However, we would have a far closer look at that in due course. For me there were plenty of other pieces of architecture to catch attention, not least of which was the Mariinsky Palace, present home of the city’s legislative assembly.
A prominent structure in the centre of Saint Isaac’s Square was the Monument To Nicholas I, an equestrian statue standing six metres in height and the first equestrian statue with the horse supported only on its hind legs in Europe when it was completed in 1859.
We only had a short time in the square and our guide implored us not to wander far on account of the traffic passing by constantly (I imagine cruise ship passenger traffic accidents are a nightmare in paperwork) but there was enough of a gap for me to venture over to the Blue Bridge over the River Moyka for a quick couple of snaps before returning to our vehicle and the short drive to the cathedral.
We gathered on the steps of the cathedral for a few minutes while our tour guide sorted out the tickets. This gave us a chance to see the impressive bronze doors of Saint Isaac’s Gate up close.
One of the things we probably don’t do enough when we’re travelling is research of the places we’re visiting. It would be easy for me to say that we like to discover things with fresh eyes and ears when we’re there rather than approaching somewhere with preconceptions but that’s just a poor attempt at trying to justify ineptitude on our part. Take Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, for instance, which we knew we’d be seeing as part of our full-day tour but because it wasn’t the main draw for us (we were most interested in the Hermitage Museum coming up later) we hadn’t checked out any of the building’s history or even glanced online to see what the place looked like. A cathedral is a cathedral, right? Well, Saint Isaac’s was one hell of a shock inside. We’d never seen anything quite as over-the-top before.
We were very amused to discover that for a period after the Russian Revolution the building had been transformed into a museum dedicated to the history of atheism. These days, though, it has returned to use as a building of religious worship and, of course, tourism.
The cupola of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral is made of cast iron, plated with pure gold, and by volume underneath it helps to form the fourth largest cathedral in the world. It is actually possible to walk around the outside of the dome, something we didn’t get the opportunity to do at the time nor even know was possible but if you take a look at some of the exterior shots of the building at the top of this post you’ll be able to see tourists doing just that.
You can see from the pictures and the video below just how ornate the decorations were but a lot of the construction techniques were very detailed and innovative too, resulting in the construction taking forty years to finish with some of the interior decor never being completed.
It was busy when we visited Saint Isaac’s Cathedral but not rammed and there was a constant buzz of conversation and tour group explanations taking place but it never got noisy. For the beautiful artwork inside and the architectural work in general it’s definitely worth a visit and it would be lovely to get a ticket up onto the roof for the views over Saint Petersburg if we ever got to return.
Fantastic pictures! Thank you for such a wonderful photo-story about Isaac!