I have always had a soft spot for Russian Churches (strange I know!). I find the architecture absolutely amazing and for a country which is only a 3 hour flight away radically different from anything else I know in Europe. So since I had the weekend for sight seeing, yesterday i thought i would pay a couple of churches a visit.
I actually went to the first church on Saturday. It is called Trinity Cathedral and with its blue roof looks absolutely amazing:
It was built in 1828 and functioned as a chapel for the military center just next door. What is all the more amazing is that Dostoevsky got married in this very church. There is a super cool statue in front of it which is completely made out of cannons in celebration of the Russo-Turkish war in 1878:
The second church is St Isaac's Cathedral. It is absolutely massive:
It took from 1818 to 1858 to build and has more than 100kg of gold leaf on the central dome alone ( I took this picture from at least 100m away!). You can climb up to the colonnade from where you have a great viewpoint of the whole of St P:
HOWEVER by far the best and personally one of my favourites (there are loads for me to go to still, just haven't had enough time to visit them yet!) is the the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood:
It was built to commemorate where Alexander II was assassinated by a grenade in 1881. What is so significant about Alexander II is that he was the tsar who introduced the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, which was massively controversial at the time and made other huge state reforms, trying to radically modernise Russia in a very short period. That is why this church is built in a very strange location right on the very edge of a canal. However I am sure you will agree that it is amazing:
Anyway today I had my first day of University but i will give you the low down (hipster language) on another post when i have actually been to some lessons as today was just sorting out administration stuff which Russians absolutely LOVE.
ciao
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