Kazan Cathedral

Kazan Cathedral

The enfilade of this temple picturesquely stretches along Nevsky Prospekt. The building itself is monumental and majestic.

But it was created by a Russian serf, and even entirely from domestic materials. Previously, there was a small church in this place, in which the miraculous icon of the Kazan Mother of God was kept. It was in her honor that the cathedral was named.

Paul I ordered that the new temple be similar to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The project was taken on by the former serf of Count Alexander Stroganov, Andrei Voronikhin, who later became a professor at the Academy of Arts. It took ten years to build - from 1801 to 1811.

The outside of the temple is decorated with bronze sculptures representing saints. The inside of the cathedral was painted in the style of the Italian Renaissance by outstanding artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1837, monuments to the great commanders Kutuzov and Barclay-de-Tolly were erected in front of the Kazan Cathedral.

Interesting Facts

The Kazan Cathedral is the largest temple of the early 19th century: its height is 71.6 meters. For the dome with a diameter of seventeen meters, a metal structure was used for the first time. The columns weigh up to thirty tons each. All materials are domestic, and the craftsmen come from Russia. And this is not an accident - after all, Count Stroganov himself proposed to the emperor to build a grandiose temple using Russian craftsmen and from Russian materials. The king was inspired by the idea and ordered that this idea be followed.

On December 6, 1876, the first political demonstration in Russia with the participation of workers took place on the square in front of the Kazan Cathedral.

LEGEND

Other legends are associated with the name of the famous commander Mikhail Kutuzov, who is buried in the cathedral. They say that only the body of the great military leader rests there, and the heart, according to his last will, remained on the military road in Prussia, where the commander unexpectedly died, and was buried in the Tillendorf cemetery. All because, dying, he allegedly said, addressing the soldiers, that his heart remained with them.