Saturday, August 20, 2011

travel St Basil's Cathedral,russia attractions

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The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat is a Russian Orthodox church erected on the Red Square in Moscow in 1555–61. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric center of the city and the hub of its growth since the 14th century.It was the tallest building in Moscow 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 side churches arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession; the tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and the 17th centuries the church, perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City,was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and 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's design, shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, has no analogues in Russian architecture: "It is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to 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.
A victim of state atheism, the church was stolen from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Unions anti-theist campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely and forcefully secularized in 1929 and, as of 2011, 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.
It is often mislabelled as the Kremlin owing to its location on Red Square in immediate proximity of the Kremlin.


St.-Basil's-Cathedral-11St.-Basil's-Cathedral-9St.-Basil's-Cathedral-555Detail of the Domes and Spire of St. Basil's Cathedral in MoscowDetail of the Domes of St. Basil's Cathedral in MoscowSt Basil Cathedralinterior-St. basil ChatedralcathedralMoscow-St. Basil's interior

1 comments:

Alex Quinn 82 said...

Amazing Photographs! I never saw photos inside of St.Basil's before! Do you happen to have Pinterest account at all with any more of your travel photos? Looks like such a different world in Russia. I have always been interested in Russian history since grade school and it would be a dream to actually study abroad there. Hopefully I would be able to learn Russian fast enough though because I do not think they are as fluent in English as some of Western Europe is. I was recently in Los Angeles where the Warner Brother Studios had chandeliers that were from Russia that were appariased for 3 million dollars each! I believe they were taken from the Czar of Russia at the time of one of the World Wars.

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