For one hundred and fifty years of the slightly more than two hundred year history of Imperial Petersburg, it was built and rebuilt. The currently existing grandiose temple is the fourth in a row; it was built over several decades.

Peter the Great was born on May 30, the day of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, a Byzantine monk. In his honor, in 1710, an order was given to build a wooden church next to the Admiralty. Here Peter I married his wife Catherine I. Later, in 1717, construction began on a new stone church, which was dismantled due to subsidence.

In 1768, by order of Catherine II, the construction of the next St. Isaac's Cathedral began, designed by A. Rinaldi, which was erected between St. Isaac's and Senate Squares. Construction was completed after the death of Catherine II by 1800. Later, the temple began to deteriorate and fell “out of favor” with the emperor.

Venerable Isaac of Dalmatia

Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, whom Peter I revered as his heavenly patron, lived in the 4th century, was a monk (the Church glorifies only monks in the rank of venerables), and labored in the desert. He suffered persecution during the reign of Emperor Valens (364-378), an ardent supporter of the heresy of Arius, who denied the consubstantiality of God the Son with God the Father (Arius argued that God the Son was created by God the Father and, therefore, in comparison with Him is a being of a lower order ). After the death of Valens and the accession to the throne of Emperor Theodosius the Great, the Monk Isaac founded a monastery near Constantinople, where he died in 383. After the death of Isaac, the monk Dalmat became the hegumen of this monastery, after whom both the monastery and its founder himself were later called.

After the Patriotic War of 1812, by order of Alexander I, the design of a new temple began. The architect's project suggested using part of the structures of the Cathedral by A. Rinaldi: preserving the altar and dome pylons.

The bell tower, altar projections and the western wall of the cathedral were subject to dismantling. The southern and northern walls were preserved. The cathedral increased in length, but its width remained the same. The building's plan acquired a rectangular shape. The height of the vaults also did not change. It was planned to build columned porticos on the north and south sides. The structure was to be crowned with one large dome and four small ones in the corners. The emperor chose the design of a five-domed temple in the classical style, the author of which was Montferrand.

Construction of a new St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg was started in 1818 and lasted 40 years. One of the tallest domed structures in the world was built.

Sasha Mitrakhovich 20.01.2016 12:14

The construction of the first church in St. Petersburg in the name of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, whom Peter I, who was born on the day of his memory (May 30, old style), considered his heavenly patron, dates back to the earliest years of the existence of the northern capital.

The first, very modest, was called a church and was hastily converted from a wooden drafting barn and was located approximately on the spot where the main building of the Admiralty now stands.

It was in this temple in 1712 that the wedding of the sovereign and Catherine Alekseevna, the former “portomoi”, took place, for whom fate had prepared the Russian throne and the name of Empress Catherine I.

Sasha Mitrakhovich 27.12.2016 08:51

The wooden St. Isaac's Church quickly fell into disrepair, and already in 1717 Peter I personally laid the first stone in the foundation of the second temple in the name of St. Isaac of Dalmatia.

The second St. Isaac's Cathedral, designed in the style of Peter the Great's Baroque, took ten years to build and had many common features with the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

The second temple stood closer to the Neva than the first, almost on the embankment, and this predetermined its short life: the river, not yet encased in granite, washed away the bank, destroying the church, and after a few decades it came, as they would say now, into disrepair state. In addition, in 1735, the bell tower spire was struck by lightning, and the temple was severely damaged by fire.

St. Isaac's Church was repaired, but the work carried out did not solve the main problem. The soil continued to settle, destroying the foundation of the temple. It was decided to build the new St. Isaac's Cathedral further from the shore.

Sasha Mitrakhovich 27.12.2016 08:56

In 1761, S.I. Chevakinsky, the creator of the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral, was appointed construction manager, but the start of work had to be postponed due to government “disorders”. In 1762, as a result of a palace coup, Catherine II ascended the throne, and soon Chevakinsky resigned. As a result, the laying of the third one took place only in 1768. The temple project was prepared by the talented Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi, who worked a lot on the architectural appearance of St. Petersburg and its suburbs.

According to Rinaldi's project, St. Isaac's Cathedral was supposed to be magnificent. Five-domed, with a high bell tower, lined with marble, it fully corresponded to the plans of Catherine II, who wanted to honor the memory of Peter the Great. But construction moved slowly, and by the time of the empress’s death the building had only been completed to the cornice. Paul I was not inspired by his mother’s expensive idea and, not at all upset by Rinaldi’s departure abroad, instructed the architect Vincenzo Brenna to complete the cathedral as soon as possible, ordering the marble prepared for cladding its upper part to be transferred to the construction of his new residence - St. Michael’s Castle.

Brenna, in a hurry to complete the construction, was forced to distort Rinaldi’s original plan, and the cathedral came out unsightly and stubby. On a marble foundation prepared for a solemn five-domed dome, Brenna built a brick “something” with one chapter, giving mockers a reason to write an epigram: “Behold, a monument to two kingdoms, / So fitting for both. / On the marble bottom / A brick top was erected.” In the short Pavlovian era, it was quite possible to move from St. Petersburg to Siberia for such verses. But you can’t hide the obvious: the third St. Isaac’s Cathedral really did not harmonize with the ceremonial appearance of the St. Petersburg center. And, with the extreme economy shown during its completion, it very quickly began to fall into disrepair: soon after the consecration of the cathedral (in 1802), plaster began to fall off the walls in pieces.

Sasha Mitrakhovich 27.12.2016 09:16

The history of the construction of the fourth, final version of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg began in 1809, when Alexander I announced a competition for the project to bring it into proper shape.

At first, there was hope that it would be possible to get by with rebuilding only its upper part, finding “a dome shape that could add grandeur and beauty to such a famous building,” but all the architects offered the sovereign projects for new cathedrals, and a few years later he left only one requirement for the project: to preserve the existing altar.

The Patriotic War ended, the Holy Alliance was concluded, and the question of rebuilding St. Isaac's Cathedral still remained open. Only in 1818, a young Frenchman, unknown to anyone not only in Russia, but also in his homeland, presented Alexander I with a project that provided for the preservation of the altar part of St. Isaac's Cathedral and the domed pylons.

From the very beginning, Montferrand's project aroused distrust among specialists, but on February 20, 1818, it was nevertheless approved by the sovereign, and on June 26, 1819, the ceremonial laying of the new St. Isaac's Cathedral took place.

Before the metropolitan public had time to admire the engraved views of the future cathedral, released by Montferrand, his project had a serious critic. He turned out to be the architect A. Modui, who was one of the members of the Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Works. In October 1820, he submitted a note to the Academy of Arts with comments that boiled down to the fact that it was not possible to build St. Isaac's Cathedral according to the existing project. Mauduit rightly pointed out an error in the calculations, due to which the diameter of the huge dome did not fit into the “square” of four pylons.

Construction of the cathedral was suspended. A special committee took up consideration of Mauduit’s comments, before which Montferrand had to justify himself, “blaming” the highest customer. “Since out of several projects,” he declared, “which I had the honor to present, preference was given to the one that is already being implemented, then ... this issue should not be discussed with me; I must scrupulously preserve what I was ordered to preserve...”

The committee confirmed Mauduit's fears, and the 1818 project was rejected. Only in 1825 Montferrand presented a new project, which was approved on April 3, a few months before the death of Alexander I.

St. Isaac's Cathedral was already completed by Nicholas I

The accession to the throne took place during troubled and joyless events. It is not surprising that St. Isaac's Cathedral was hardly remembered in the first months of the new reign. Construction has stopped. The emperor's active intervention was needed to get things moving.

A little later, work on the construction of the cathedral acquired an unprecedented scale. Every year, the construction site absorbed up to a million rubles from the treasury (for comparison, the entire construction of the Trinity Cathedral on Izmailovskaya Square cost two million rubles). It should be noted that Nicholas considered it his duty not only to allocate sufficient funds for the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral, but also to personally give instructions on how to build. The emperor's desire to build a temple that would have no equal in splendor led to the building becoming heavier and overloaded with decorative elements. Fortunately, Montferrand managed to refuse the sovereign’s most inappropriate proposals: for example, he convinced Nicholas to change the decision he had already made to gild all the external sculptures of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

Neither money nor human lives were spared for the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral

The “construction site of the century,” patronized by the sovereign, amazed the imagination of his contemporaries. They did not stop at the costs or sacrifices. Just the process of cutting down and installing granite columns is worth it! They were cut down at the Peturlaks quarry near Vyborg, chosen due to its large reserves of granite and the proximity of the Gulf of Finland. The contour of the workpiece was marked on a steep granite rock, then iron wedges were inserted into the holes drilled along the contour, and the workers simultaneously hit the wedges with heavy sledgehammers. The blows were repeated until a crack appeared in the granite.

Iron levers with rings in which ropes were secured were placed into the crack. Each rope was pulled by forty people, thus moving the column blank away from the granite “base.” Then holes were punched in the column and hooks with ropes were attached to them, connected to the gates standing nearby. With the help of these simple mechanisms, the column was finally separated from the rock and rolled onto a wooden platform prepared in advance. And although Montferrand noted that such work in Russia “is nothing more than a daily affair, to which no one is surprised,” they were still extremely difficult.

The future columns were transported on flat-bottomed ships, and from the pier in St. Petersburg they were delivered to the construction site along a specially constructed rail track (the first in Russia).

To lift the columns, scaffolding was erected, consisting of three high spans, and 16 special cast iron capstan mechanisms were installed. Eight people worked on each of these capstans, and installing one seventeen-meter column (each of them weighed 114 tons) into a vertical position took approximately three quarters of an hour. The first column was raised on March 20, 1828 in the presence of a select public (members of the imperial family were also present among the spectators), and by the autumn of 1830 all four colossal porticos had already appeared to the amazed gaze of St. Petersburg residents.

Few of those who admired the slowly but steadily growing enormity of St. Isaac's Cathedral were interested in the fate of ordinary workers who took part in the construction of the main temple of the empire. According to documents, there were up to half a million such “forced” creators of the cathedral. These were state and serf peasants. About a quarter of them died on construction sites due to accidents or illnesses. During the gilding of the cathedral's dome alone, which was done using the fire gilding technique, 60 craftsmen died from mercury vapor poisoning.

Death of Montferrand

In modern language, St. Isaac's Cathedral was a “long-term construction project.” For forty years, work was going on in the center of St. Petersburg, comparable, perhaps, only with the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. In the 1840s, rumors spread throughout the city: Montferrand de was in no hurry to complete the construction of the temple, because he was predicted to die soon after the completion of construction. And indeed: less than a month had passed since the solemn consecration of the cathedral (May 30, 1858), the architect died. However, he was no longer young, so it was apparently not a matter of prediction.

Montferrand wanted to be buried in the cathedral he built (not surprising, since a significant part of his life was connected with him), but both the Holy Synod and Emperor Alexander II, as expected, opposed this, since Montferrand was a Catholic. Therefore, the widow of the deceased had to take his remains to Paris. The symbolic farewell of the creator to his creation nevertheless took place: the funeral cortege with the coffin of Auguste Montferrand drove around St. Isaac's Cathedral three times.

Sasha Mitrakhovich 27.12.2016 09:27

One of the greatest squares in the world presented a wonderful sight: to the right of us, the cathedral church raised its golden dome to the sky; its porticoes were covered with a diverse crowd in shiny uniforms; to the left, behind another stage built near Admiralteysky Boulevard, the wide ribbon of the Neva shone and the flags of ships fluttered; Motley masses of troops were moving in front of us, taking their places. The big bell hummed solemnly...

Soon after the Sovereign Emperor, members of the Most August Family and Their retinue entered, where, in Their presence, the rite of consecration of the temple was performed, a procession of the cross appeared in the distance, preceded by singers in multi-colored robes. The clergy, in white glazed vestments, with banners, images and holy relics carried at the head by the bishop, walked in two rows, in front of which they carried a lantern and a cross.

As the procession passed by the regiments, music played the hymn “How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion.” This music, performed by piano, produced an amazing impression: one could hear not instruments, but as if several choirs were singing in the distance. All together - both this touching music of the sacred hymn, and this quiet, solemn, brilliant procession moving in the middle of an immense square, lined with troops and framed by thousands of people - presented a spectacle that, of course, everyone who happened to see will not forget for the rest of their lives. his.

Upon consecration, the Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia was declared a cathedral. The solemnity of cathedral services on church holidays and royal days attracted a lot of people here. St. Isaac's deacons and choristers were famous in the city, and among them, most especially, was Deacon Vasily Malinin, who served in the cathedral in 1863-1905 and, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, had a phenomenal bass. The pilgrims especially loved to visit “Isaac’s” on Maundy Thursday during Holy Week of Great Lent, when the ritual of washing their feet was performed - in memory of the Last Supper, during which the Savior washed the feet of his disciples.

Since 1879, on the initiative of the cathedral elder General E.V. Bogdanovich, the cathedral began to publish and distribute brochures and leaflets with moral and religious content, addressed to the simple and which were very popular. Since 1896, a brotherhood operated at the main temple of the empire, which supported several charitable institutions at its own expense, and since 1911, a society of banner bearers. In 1909, in St. Isaac's Cathedral - for the first time in St. Petersburg - a liturgy was served, accompanied by popular singing.

Before the revolution, five priests served in the cathedral. Its last rector (since 1917) was Archpriest Nikolai Grigorievich Smiryagin.

Foucault pendulum in St. Isaac's Cathedral

The invention of the pendulum, which clearly demonstrates the rotation of the Earth, belongs to the French physicist and astronomer Jacques Foucault (1819-1868). The first public experiment with Foucault's pendulum was carried out in Paris in 1851. Then Foucault suspended a metal ball weighing 28 kilograms (with a tip attached below) on a steel wire 67 meters long under the dome of the Pantheon. The pendulum was designed in such a way that it could swing not in one plane (like clock pendulums), but in all directions. A circular fence with a radius of 6 meters was made under the pendulum with the center directly under the suspension point, and sand was poured inside the fence. The point attached to the ball traced the sand along its path, and it soon became clear that the plane of the pendulum's swing was turning clockwise relative to the floor: with each subsequent swing, the point swept away the sand approximately three millimeters from the previous place. So viewers could see with their own eyes the rotation of the Earth.
The Foucault pendulum, which operated in St. Isaac's Cathedral since 1931, has now been dismantled, but there are several other similar pendulums in Russia, albeit smaller ones (in the St. Petersburg and Volgograd planetariums, as well as at Altai University).

"The Triumph of Science over Religion"

After the revolution, the cathedral did not escape the common fate of all churches. In 1922, he was literally robbed - under the plausible pretext of helping the starving. The Bolshevik program of confiscation of church valuables cost St. Isaac's Cathedral 48 kilograms of gold and 2,200 kilograms of silver.

Repeatedly (in 1923 and 1927) the authorities tried to close the cathedral, but these attempts were crowned with success only in 1928. Two years later, all the bells were removed from the cathedral belfry (they were sent to be melted down), and an anti-religious museum was opened in the cathedral itself, the pride of which was a Foucault pendulum on a suspension 98 meters long. The pendulum was launched on the night of April 11-12, 1931, and the newspapers of that time presented this event as “the triumph of science over religion” - although, strictly speaking, the Church never had anything against Jacques Foucault or his pendulum.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, St. Isaac's Cathedral was adapted to store exhibits from suburban Leningrad museums, as well as from the Summer Palace of Peter I and the Museum of City History. The traces of enemy shells left here and there on the columns still remind us of the period of the blockade.

In 1948, a museum of the same name was opened in St. Isaac's Cathedral, and after restoration work in the 1950s-1960s, an observation deck for visitors was equipped on the cathedral colonnade, which almost all guests of St. Petersburg consider it their duty to climb to for a beautiful view of the city.

Sasha Mitrakhovich 27.12.2016 09:53

And the Sahaki Cathedral took 40 years to build, and when the scaffolding was finally removed from it, the need for a structure like a temple disappeared almost immediately. About who built the famous temple, how many reconstructions it went through and what legends surround it - in the material of the portal "Culture.RF".

Three predecessors of St. Isaac's Cathedral

St. Isaac's Cathedral. Photo: rossija.info

Saint Isaac's Cathedral by Auguste Montferrand became the fourth cathedral built on this square. The first church in honor of St. Isaac of Dalmatia was erected for workers of the Admiralty shipyards almost immediately after the founding of St. Petersburg. Or rather, it was rebuilt from a drafting barn under the leadership of Harman van Boles. Peter I, born on the feast day of St. Isaac, married Catherine I here in 1712. Already in 1717, when the old church began to deteriorate, a new stone building was laid. Construction proceeded under the leadership of Georg Mattarnovi and Nikolai Gerbel. Half a century later, when the second Peter the Great Church fell into disrepair, a third building was founded - in a different place, a little further from the bank of the Neva. Its architect was Antonio Rinaldi.

Victory of the draftsman over the architects

Semyon Shchukin. Portrait of Alexander I. 1800s. State Russian Museum

Evgeny Plyushar. Portrait of Auguste Montferrand. 1834. State Russian Museum

The competition for the construction of the current St. Isaac's Cathedral was announced in 1809 by Alexander I. Among its participants were the best architects of their time - Andrian Zakharov, Andrei Voronikhin, Vasily Stasov, Giacomo Quarenghi, Charles Cameron. However, none of their projects satisfied the emperor. In 1816, on the advice of the head of the Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Works, Augustine Betancourt, work on the cathedral was entrusted to the young architect Auguste Montferrand. This decision was surprising: Montferrand did not have much experience in construction - he established himself not with buildings, but with drawings.

Unsuccessful start of construction

The architect's inexperience played a role. In 1819, construction of the cathedral began according to Montferrand's design, but just a year later his project was thoroughly criticized by Anton Mauduit, a member of the Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Works. He believed that Montferrand made grave mistakes when planning the foundations and pylons (support pillars). This was due to the fact that the architect wanted to make the most of the fragments that remained from the Rinaldi Cathedral. Although at first Montferrand fought off Mauduit's criticism with all his might, later he nevertheless agreed with the criticism - and construction was suspended.

Architectural and engineering achievements

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: fedpress.ru

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: boomsbeat.com

In 1825, Montferrand designed a new grandiose building in the classicist style. Its height was 101.5 meters, and the diameter of the dome was almost 26 meters. Construction proceeded extremely slowly: it took 5 years to create the foundation alone. For the foundation, it was necessary to dig deep trenches into which tarred piles were driven - more than 12 thousand pieces. After this, all the trenches were connected to each other and filled with water. With the onset of cold weather, the water froze, and the piles were cut down to the level of the ice. It took another two years to install the columns of four covered galleries - porticoes, granite monoliths for which were supplied from Vyborg quarries.

Over the next six years, walls and dome pillars were erected, and another four years - vaults, domes and bell towers. The main dome was made not of stone, as was traditionally done, but of metal, which significantly lightened its weight. When designing this structure, Montferrand was guided by the dome of London's St. Paul's Cathedral by Christopher Wren. More than 100 kilograms of gold were used to gild the dome.

Contribution of sculptors to the design of the cathedral

The sculptural decoration of the cathedral was created under the direction of Ivan Vitali. By analogy with the Golden Gate of the Florentine Baptistery, he made impressive bronze doors with images of saints. Vitali also created the statues of the 12 apostles and angels on the corners of the building and above the pilasters (flat columns). Bronze reliefs depicting biblical scenes performed by Vitali himself and Philippe Honoré Lemaire were placed above the pediments. Pyotr Klodt and Alexander Loganovsky also participated in the sculptural design of the temple.

Stained glass, stone trim and other interior details

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: gopiter.ru

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: ok-inform.ru

Work on the interiors of the cathedral took 17 years and ended only in 1858. The inside of the temple was decorated with valuable types of stones - lapis lazuli, malachite, porphyry, and various types of marble. The main artists of their time worked on the painting of the cathedral: Fyodor Bruni painted “The Last Judgment”, Karl Bryullov painted “The Virgin Mary in Glory” in the ceiling; the area of ​​this painting is more than 800 square meters.

The iconostasis of the cathedral was built in the form of a triumphal arch and decorated with monolithic malachite columns. The icons, made using the mosaic technique, were created based on the original paintings of Timofey Neff. Not only the iconostasis, but also a significant part of the temple walls were decorated with mosaics. In the window of the main altar there was a stained glass window depicting the “Resurrection of Christ” by Heinrich Maria von Hess.

Expensive pleasure

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: rpconline.ru

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: orangesmile.com

At the time of construction, St. Isaac's Cathedral became the most expensive temple in Europe. Just laying the foundation took 2.5 million rubles. In total, Isaac cost the treasury 23 million rubles. For comparison: the entire construction of the Trinity Cathedral, commensurate with St. Isaac's, cost two million. This was due both to its grandiose size (the 102-meter high temple still remains one of the largest cathedrals in the world) and to the luxurious interior and exterior decoration of the building. Nicholas I, taken aback by such expenses, ordered savings at least on utensils.

Consecration of the temple

The consecration of the cathedral was held as a state holiday: Alexander II was present, and the event lasted about seven hours. There were spectator seats around the cathedral, tickets for which cost a lot of money: from 25 to 100 rubles. Enterprising townspeople even rented apartments with a view of St. Isaac's Cathedral, from where they could watch the ceremony. Despite the fact that there were many who wanted to attend the event, many of them did not appreciate St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and at first, because of its proportions, the temple bore the nickname “Inkwell.”

Myths and legends

Issakievsky Cathedral. Photo: rosfoto.ru

It was rumored that such a long construction of the cathedral was not caused by the complexity of the work, but by the fact that a clairvoyant predicted Montferrand's death immediately after the completion of the temple. And indeed, the architect died a month after the consecration of Isaac. The architect's will - to bury him in the temple - was never fulfilled. The coffin with the architect's body was carried around the temple, and then handed over to the widow, who took the remains of her husband to Paris. After Montferrand's death, passers-by allegedly saw his ghost wandering along the steps of the cathedral - he did not dare to enter the temple. According to another legend, the house of the Romanovs was supposed to fall after the removal of the scaffolding that surrounded the cathedral long after its consecration. Coincidence or not, the forests were finally removed in 1916, and in March 1917, Nicholas II was evacuated. Since the German pilots used the dome of the cathedral as a landmark, they did not shoot directly at the cathedral - and the vault remained undamaged. However, the cathedral did suffer during the war: fragments that exploded near the temple damaged the columns, and the cold (during the years of the siege of St. Isaac's was not heated) damaged the wall paintings.

On June 11 (May 30, Old Style), 1858, a solemn ceremony of consecration of St. Isaac's Cathedral took place.

St. Isaac's Cathedral, which for 150 years has remained the largest and most beautiful church in St. Petersburg, one of the main symbols of the city, has a very dramatic fate - it was built four times.

The first, wooden one, was erected in 1707, during the reign of Tsar Peter I. The temple was founded on the tsar’s birthday, which coincided with the day of remembrance of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, hence the name. Peter understood that the wooden temple would not last long, and in 1717 he ordered the German architect Georg Johann Mattarnovi to replace the walls with stone ones. The new church had no individuality, in many ways it repeated the Peter and Paul Cathedral, even the chimes on the bell towers of both churches were the same. In 1735, the cathedral was struck by lightning and a fire started. This event was seen as a “sign from God,” and the temple was abandoned.

At the end of her reign, Empress Catherine II undertook to revive the cathedral, but it was decided to erect it in a new place, behind the famous “Bronze Horseman”, the monument to Peter. The construction was entrusted to the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi, but Rinaldi fell ill and left for his homeland, and Catherine II soon died. Her son, Emperor Paul I, entrusted the completion of the construction of the temple to another Italian, Vincenzo Brenna.

In 1816, during a service, a huge piece of plaster fell from the ceiling of the church, causing horror among the believers. The building was clearly in need of serious renovation. However, the next emperor, Alexander I, preferred to solve the problem radically and ordered the cathedral to be rebuilt. This time the task was to make St. Isaac's the main church and decoration of St. Petersburg. A competition was announced for the best project.

The entire life of the outstanding French architect Auguste Montferrand is connected with the last construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. It was he who submitted a project to the competition that captured the monarch’s imagination. Montferrand was entrusted with the construction of the new Isaac. The construction, which began in 1818, lasted for forty years and was carried out under three emperors - Alexander I, Nicholas I and Alexander II.

The work was held back by a number of reasons - numerous wishes of the kings, inaccurate technical calculations, and also the fact that the foundation was placed in a swamp. It was necessary to drive about 11 thousand piles into the ground and place hewn granite blocks on them in two rows. The cathedral was built on this powerful support cushion. Problems also arose with the installation of 48 monolithic granite pillars, weighing 114 tons each, which were intended for the porticoes. Through the efforts of thousands of serfs, these columns were delivered to St. Petersburg from Finland.

Montferrand made an extraordinary architectural decision: install the columns before building the walls. In March 1822, in the presence of the royal family and a crowd of townspeople, the first column was raised. The last one was installed only 8 years later, and only then did the construction of the walls begin. When everything was already moving towards the finale, a huge spherical dome with a diameter of 22 meters was raised onto the roof. Its copper lining was poured with molten gold three times. A cross of impressive size was erected on the dome. Montferrand abandoned the traditional bell tower for Russian churches, but retained the five-domed structure inherent in them, placing towers with domes in the corners of the building. The stone bulk of the cathedral, together with the dome and cross, rose above the city by more than 100 meters.

Construction of the cathedral was completed in 1848, but it took another 10 years to finish the interior. The grand opening and consecration of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which was proclaimed the cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church, took place on June 11 (May 30, O.S.), 1858.

Interesting facts.

Work on the construction of the cathedral's foundation lasted five years and involved 125 thousand workers - masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths. At the quarries of the island of Puterlaks near Vyborg, granite monoliths for columns were being cut down. Work was carried out all year round.

In the quarries of Karelia, huge granite blocks weighing from 64 to 114 tons were mined. Granite monoliths for the columns of the four porticos and marble for cladding the facades and interior of the cathedral were mined at the Tivdiysky and Ruskolsky marble quarries. The first were located in the Petrozavodsk district of the Olonets province, and the second - in the Serdobol district of the Vyborg province. Light and dark red marble was mined at Tivdiyskiye Lomki, and light gray marble with bluish veins was mined at Ruskolskiye.

Delivery of these blocks to the construction site, construction of the dome and installation of 112 monolithic columns were extremely difficult construction operations that required many technical innovations from the builders. When one of the engineers building St. Isaac's Cathedral invented a useful mechanism to facilitate the work of builders, he received a severe reprimand for not inventing such a useful thing earlier, thereby introducing unnecessary expenses into the treasury.

400 kg of gold, 16 tons of malachite, 500 kg of lapis lazuli and a thousand tons of bronze were used for the interior decoration of the cathedral. About 300 statues and high reliefs were cast, the mosaic occupied an area of ​​6.5 thousand square meters. meters.

The faint smell of incense that can be detected in the cathedral comes from the malachite plates decorating the columns of the main altar. The craftsmen held them together with a special composition based on myrrh oil. Myrrh is prepared according to a special recipe, combining the oil of the sacred myrrh tree with red wine and incense. The mixture is boiled over fire on Maundy Thursday, and is usually used for the rite of anointing.

The process of decorating St. Isaac's Cathedral was complex: the gilding of the domes was especially difficult, the finishing of which took 100 kg of gold. An integral part of the gilding of the cathedral domes was the use of mercury, the toxic fumes of which killed about 60 craftsmen.

Due to the fact that St. Isaac's Cathedral took an unusually long time to build, there were rumors in St. Petersburg about a deliberate delay in construction, since the main architect of St. Isaac's Cathedral, Auguste Montferrand, was predicted that he would be alive as long as the cathedral was being built. Perhaps this is a coincidence, but a month after the completion of the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which became the architect's life's work, Auguste Montferrand died.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

We decided to visit this one of the largest Orthodox churches-museums in St. Petersburg, which has the full name of the Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, during one of our evening walks around the city...

At this time of day there are very few visitors and you can calmly explore all the sights of the temple without unnecessary crowds...

Having become the holders of entrance tickets (250 rubles each), we enter the museum (on special days, with the permission of the museum administration, church services can be held in the cathedral)....

The interior of the cathedral immediately amazes with its splendor....

Very often, St. Isaac's Cathedral is called the "museum of colored stone".... And this is no coincidence, since inside its walls and floor are lined with marble slabs (14 types of natural marble were used), which were brought from Italy, France, as well as from the best quarries of Russia..

More than 300 kg of red gold were spent on finishing the cathedral,

and the total amount allocated by the royal treasury for work on the interior of the cathedral amounted to a fabulous sum at that time - 23 million 260 thousand silver rubles...

Having looked around a little, we begin to get acquainted with the history of the cathedral...

It turns out that before the cathedral that we see today appeared, several versions of churches were built on this site at different times...

This is what the first St. Isaac's Church looked like....

It was built in 1707 and was an ordinary wooden frame measuring 18x9 meters... Its birth was due to a vital necessity: at that time more than 10 thousand people worked at the nearby Admiralty Roofs, who could not satisfy their spiritual needs.. After the completion of construction, the temple was consecrated in the name of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, whom Peter greatly revered. I (he was born on his memorial day)....

By 1717, due to the harsh climate, the church began to deteriorate greatly....

It was then that the decision was made: instead of the old wooden church, to build a new one - in stone....

In 1727, such a church already received its first believers....

The dimensions of the new church were already 60x30 meters and it had a bell tower 27 meters high, which was decorated with a spire 13 meters high....

But the fate of this option did not work out either.... Firstly, when the church was built, the location of its installation was slightly changed from the previous option - it was moved closer to the Neva (to where the Bronze Horseman monument now stands). The temple on the very bank of the river looked magnificent, but for some reason the architects forgot that the Neva is characterized by wide floods, which gradually began to wash away the foundation of the church... And, secondly, in addition to this, in 1735 during a severe thunderstorm a lightning strike hit the cathedral, which led to a big fire... As a result, the temple was very badly damaged from the inside...

In 1762, having ascended the throne, Catherine II issues an order for the construction of a new cathedral (on the site of the first option)....

The work is entrusted to the architect A. Rinaldi, who took up the matter with great zeal. According to his project, the cathedral was supposed to have five domes and a tall bell tower.... But Catherine II dies, Rinaldi withdraws from the management of construction (during this time the building was built only up to the cornice), and Pavel I instructs another architect, V. Brenna, to bring what he started to its logical conclusion.... But since the new emperor at that time was closely engaged in the construction of his residence (Mikhailovsky Palace), he needed large quantities of building material, especially marble... .In order not to bother for a long time, Pavel I decided to borrow it from the construction of the cathedral.... As a result, the newly erected temple was very different from the original project: instead of 5 domes - 1, and the bell tower became half as low....

On May 30, 1802, the third version of St. Isaac's Cathedral was illuminated in a solemn atmosphere....

Everything would have been fine (perhaps the third version of the temple would have existed for a considerable time), but in the opinion of the new emperor - Alexander I , the architectural appearance of St. Isaac's Cathedral did not correspond to the architectural concept inherent in the central part of the city at that time... Therefore, already in 1809, a competition was announced for a new project of St. Isaac's Cathedral... The most famous architects of that time took part in it: Cameron, Quarenghi , Voronikhin, Zakharov... As a result, the winner was the little-known, young French architect O. Montferrand, who, through his protégé A.A. Betancourt gets an appointment with the emperor and shows him his drawings with sketches of the cathedral.... The emperor liked them and he immediately signed a decree appointing Montferrand as the personal imperial architect and instructing him to lead the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral...

In June 1819, the ceremonial foundation stone of the temple took place... However, not everything went smoothly for Montferrand either... Due to strong criticism of the project from leading architects - members of the Academy of Arts, who presented a whole list of specific and significant comments, Montferrand had to stop work and start finalizing the project... The new version of the cathedral, which already suited everyone, was finally approved in 1825...

This fourth version of St. Isaac's Cathedral is what we have the opportunity to see today....

In memory of the main builder, a bust of Auguste Montferrand is installed in the cathedral, which is made of the same material that was used in the construction of the temple..

Considering the specifics of the terrain on which the cathedral of impressive size was being built, for the first time in domestic practice, piles were used to build the foundation... In total, over 10 thousand of them were driven...

An equally difficult task was the installation of 48 17-meter granite columns, each of which weighed more than 114 tons...

For these purposes, a special scaffolding design was developed, thanks to which it took only 45 minutes to lift one column...

The model of the construction of these scaffolds today occupies a place of honor among the museum exhibits, demonstrating the progress of technical thought during the time of grandiose construction....

During the construction of the temple, architects, engineers and workers had to solve many problems: from the delivery of granite monoliths from quarries to the construction of domes and their gilding....

However, on May 30, 1858 (if you remember, this is precisely the day of memory of Isaac of Dalmatia), a new, and last to date, version of St. Isaac's Cathedral was solemnly consecrated in the presence of Emperor Alexander II....

In its geometry, the cathedral represents a cross embedded in a square.... Due to this, four porticoes were formed: southern, northern, western and eastern....

The height of the cathedral is 101.5 meters, width - 100 meters.... The diameter of the dome is 25.8 m... The cathedral has 112 monolithic columns of different sizes (48 columns of the lower tier with a diameter of 1.85 m and a height of 17 m are among the most gigantic in the world, second only to the Alexander and Pompeian columns)...

Along the perimeter of the dome, which is the sixth largest in the world in size, there are figurines of angels and archangels cast in bronze....

At the corners and tops of the cathedral's pediments there are statues of the apostles....

Somehow we got a little carried away - and ended up outside the cathedral....

We quickly return inside the temple again...

In the eastern portico of the temple there is the main iconostasis, which is a grandiose triumphal structure....

It is carved from white marble....

The architectural decoration of the iconostasis is eight columns and two pilasters 9.7 m high and 0.62 m wide, made of malachite and decorated with gilded capitals....

The main altar of the temple.... Dedicated to Isaac of Dalmatia...

While the people have dispersed, you can come closer and carefully examine it....

Fragment of the Royal Gate....

Behind the Royal Doors there is a stained glass window depicting the Risen Savior, made at the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Munich....

The area of ​​the stained glass window is almost 30 sq.m.... Its installation in the church required special permission from the Holy Synod: the whole point is that, as a rule, stained glass windows are inherent in Catholic churches.... It was after this incident that stained glass windows found application in Orthodox churches monasteries....

We manage to look inside the altar...

Here you can see gold products from the company "Nichols and Plinke"....

The top of the Royal Gate is decorated with a bronze group by Klodt with the image of Christ Pantocrator in glory...

Above the Royal Doors there is an icon of the Last Supper....

In fact, St. Isaac's Cathedral is also a museum of painting: there are about 150 panels and paintings here, the creation of which involved Bryullov, Zavyalov, Bruni, Markov, Basin, etc.... The specific location of the cathedral has led to the fact that inside the temple there is always There is high humidity, which has a detrimental effect on artistic canvases made using standard technology. To avoid the negative consequences of this natural factor, it was decided to use mosaics for interior decoration...

One of the first paintings made using this technology is the “Christ the Savior” mosaic, which is located on the right side of the Royal Gate....

In addition to the main altar, there are two more in St. Isaac's Cathedral:

The left altar is dedicated to the Great Martyr Catherine....

Sculptural group "Resurrection" (sculptor N.S. Pimenov)....

Next to the altar there is a mosaic icon of the Holy Great Martyr Catherine and a bust of Montferrand by I. Vitali 1850...

The right altar is dedicated to the blessed Alexander Nevsky....

Some mosaic icons of this altar

And part of its interior can be examined in more detail....

Bronze composition "Transfiguration" (sculptor N.S. Pimenov) above the entrance of the altar.....

Before us are the icons "St. Isaac" and "St. Peter"....

"Nativity of the Virgin Mary", "Resurrection of the Lord"...

"The Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles", "The Resurrection of Christ"....

"Last Supper"....

"The Righteous Saints Joachim and Anna" (Steuben, 1849), mosaic icon "St. Peter"....

The miraculous icon "Our Lady of Tikhvin" - a copy of an ancient icon located in the Tikhvin Monastery...

"The Resurrection of the Blessed Virgin Mary" (Steuben, 1853) and others....

Separately, I would like to dwell on the gates of St. Isaac's Cathedral....

They are made of oak, on top of which bronze reliefs are installed... Each gate leaf weighs about 10 tons....

The bas-reliefs were made by Ivan Petrovich Vitali (Giovanni Vitali), who in 1841 received a large order for the sculptural decoration of St. Isaac's Cathedral...

As a subject for his works, Vitali used episodes from the lives of saints...

After visiting the "lower tier" of St. Isaac's Cathedral

It would be nice to inspect its upper part...

The first thing that immediately catches your eye is the chandelier (chandelier) weighing more than 2.5 tons,

and of course the main dome of the cathedral...

The volumetric dome is “supported” by 12 angels....

The decoration of the dome is the painting “Our Lady in Glory” by K. Bryullov (completed by P. Basin)....

The painting area is over 800 sq.m.....

Under the dome itself, at a height of about 80 meters, a “small” dove with a wingspan of only 1.65 m and a total length of 2.7 meters is suspended on steel cables... This is the work of the sculptor Dylev...

The plafonds in other places of St. Isaac's Cathedral are no less expressive...

For example, on the eastern side of the temple, above the altar you can see “The Last Judgment” by F.A. Bruni....

On the western side we see the painting "The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel"....

Just below - “Sun, Moon and Stars with Angels”...

To examine all the magnificent paintings of St. Isaac's Cathedral will require a lot of time and physical effort (the head is thrown up quite often), so as we continue our journey through the temple, we will present only some of the works (in total, in the temple you can count 103 wall paintings and 52 paintings made on canvas) .....

In addition to paintings and paintings, an integral part of the interior decoration of St. Isaac's Cathedral are numerous sculptures made of copper using the galvanoplasty method....

With this our journey through St. Isaac's Cathedral comes to its final stage...

We approach the information stand to once again refresh our memory of the main milestones in the “life” of the cathedral,

and heading towards the exit...

Story

delivery of columns of St. Isaac's Cathedral

By his appearance St. Isaac's Cathedral obliged to Peter I. Peter was born on May 30, the day of Isaac of Dalmatia, a Byzantine monk who was once canonized. On May 30, 1710, the sovereign ordered the construction of a wooden St. Isaac's Church near the Admiralty. The order was carried out. The church was built on the banks of the Neva, on the western side of the Admiralty. It was here that on February 19, 1712, Peter I married his wife Catherine.

In 1717, construction of a new stone St. Isaac's Church began there, according to the design of G.I. Mattarnovi. In 1723, Peter I signed a decree that sailors of the Baltic Fleet should take the oath only in this temple. St. Isaac's Church was built until the 1750s. Under the weight of the building, the soil began to settle, which is why the temple had to be dismantled.

installation of columns of the main dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral

In 1768, Catherine II ordered the construction of another St. Isaac's Cathedral to begin, now according to the design of Antonio Rinaldi. They began to build the cathedral in a new place, further from the coast, where the modern building is located. Since then, it separates St. Isaac's and Senate Squares.

The new building of St. Isaac's Cathedral was designed to be quite bright and was faced with Olonets marble. However, by 1796, by the death of Catherine II, it was only half built. Paul I, immediately after ascending the throne, ordered that all the marble be transferred to the construction of the Mikhailovsky Castle, and St. Isaac's Cathedral be completed in brick. In addition, it was necessary to reduce the height of the bell tower, lower the main dome, and abandon the construction of side domes.

The completion of the third building of St. Isaac's Cathedral was delayed. Antonio Rinaldi left Russia and Vincenzo Brenna completed the work. The new St. Isaac's Cathedral was completed only in 1800.

The following epigram was born among the people about this building:

"Behold the monument of two kingdoms,
Decent for both of them,
On the marble bottom
A brick top has been erected."

The quality of construction left much to be desired. During one of the services, damp plaster fell from the ceiling. When they began to understand the reasons for this, they realized that the building was subject to serious alteration.

St. Isaac's Cathedral, 1844

In 1809, Alexander I announced a competition for the construction of a new St. Isaac's Cathedral. The competition was attended by A. N. Voronikhin, A. D. Zakharov, C. Cameron, D. Quarenghi, L. Ruska, V. P. Stasov, J. Thomas de Thomon. Their projects were not accepted by the emperor, since they all proposed to build a new cathedral anew, without using an already built structure.

The creation of the fourth building of St. Isaac's Cathedral was delayed by the Patriotic War of 1812. In 1816, Alexander I again ordered to begin designing the temple.

The design of the French architect Auguste Montferrand was chosen as the final one. This decision surprised many, since Montferrand was not well known at that time. The architect presented the emperor with twenty-four cathedral designs in different styles. The emperor chose a five-domed temple in the classical style. In addition, the emperor’s decision was influenced by the fact that Montferrand proposed using part of the structures of Rinaldi’s cathedral.

St. Isaac's Cathedral

Taking into account local soil characteristics, 10,762 piles were driven into the base of the foundation. Now this method of soil compaction is quite common, but at that time it made a huge impression on the city residents. Then the following joke went around the city. As if when they drove another pile into the ground, it went underground without a trace. After the first, they began to drive in another, but that one also disappeared into the swampy soil. They installed a third, a fourth... Until a letter from New York arrived to the builders in St. Petersburg: “You have ruined our pavement.” - “What do we have to do with this?” - answered from St. Petersburg. - “But on the end of a log sticking out of the ground, there is a mark of the St. Petersburg timber exchange “Gromov and Co.” An answer came from America.

Granite for the columns of St. Isaac's Cathedral was mined in quarries on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, near Vyborg. These works were supervised by stonemason Samson Sukhanov and Arkhip Shikhin. Sukhanov invented an original method for extracting huge solid pieces of stone. Workers drilled holes in the granite, inserted wedges into them and hit them until a crack appeared in the stone. Iron levers with rings were placed in the crack, and ropes were threaded through the rings. Forty people pulled the ropes and gradually broke out the granite blocks.

Nikolai Bestuzhev wrote about the transportation of these granite monoliths:

“They got down to business with their usual mechanics: they tied the ship more firmly to the shore - they laid out ropes, logs, boards, wrapped the ropes, crossed themselves - they shouted loud hurray! - and the proud colossi obediently rolled from the ship to the shore, and rolling past Peter, who, It seemed as if he was blessing his sons with his hand; they lay down humbly at the foot of St. Isaac’s Church.”

model of St. Isaac's Cathedral A. Rinaldi

The installation of the columns was carried out before the construction of the walls of St. Isaac's Cathedral. The first column (north portico) was installed in March 1828, and the last in August 1830.

More than 100 kilograms of red gold were spent gilding the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral.

St. Isaac's Cathedral took an unusually long time to build. In this regard, there were rumors in St. Petersburg about a deliberate delay in construction. “They say that a visiting clairvoyant predicted Montferrand’s death immediately after construction was completed.” - “That’s why he’s been building for so long.”

These rumors unexpectedly continued in real life. The architect actually dies shortly after the completion of the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. In this regard, various versions of what happened appeared in St. Petersburg folklore. Many of them refer to the hostile attitude of Emperor Alexander II towards the architect. Allegedly, during the consecration of St. Isaac's Cathedral, someone drew the attention of Alexander II to one of the sculptural decorations of the building. Montferrand left a unique portrait. In the sculptural decor of the western pediment there is a group of saints bowing their heads to greet the appearance of Isaac of Dalmatia. Among them, the sculptor placed the figure of Montferrand with a model of the cathedral in his hands, who, unlike the others, holds his head straight. Having drawn attention to this fact, the emperor did not shake hands with the architect as he passed by, nor did he say a word of gratitude for the work. Montferrand was seriously upset, went home before the end of the consecration ceremony, fell ill and died a month later.

St. Isaac's Cathedral

In addition to the figure of the architect, the bas-relief of the western pediment also contains figures of two nobles, whose faces are given the facial features of the President of the Academy of Arts A. N. Olenin and Prince P. V. Volkonsky.

Rumors aside, the delay in construction can be explained by design errors made by Montferrand. They were discovered already during construction, and it took time to eliminate them.

Construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral was completed in 1858. On May 30 of this year the consecration of the temple took place.

Auguste Montferrand bequeathed to bury him in his main brainchild - St. Isaac's Cathedral. But Alexander II did not fulfill this desire. The coffin with the architect’s body was only carried around the temple, after which the widow took it to Paris.

Members of the royal family were baptized in St. Isaac's Cathedral, and it became the center of citywide holidays. However, the scaffolding was not removed from it for a long time. They said that the building was built in bad faith and required constant repairs. No expense was spared on the cathedral, and a legend was born that the House of the Romanovs would fall as soon as the scaffolding was removed from Isaac. They were finally removed only in 1916. Just shortly before Nicholas II abdicated the throne.

The height of St. Isaac's Cathedral is 101.5 meters. On the porticoes around the dome drum there are 72 columns made of granite monoliths weighing from 64 to 114 tons. For the first time in construction practice, columns of this size rose to a height of more than 40 meters. The cathedral is the fourth largest in the world in size. It is second only to St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London and St. Mary's in Florence. With an area of ​​4,000 square meters, it can accommodate up to 12,000 people.

St. Isaac's Cathedral is undoubtedly one of the symbols of St. Petersburg. Its tall drum with a dome can be seen from the Gulf of Finland; it has become a noticeable part of the city’s portrait. However, due to the disproportion of the drum and the bells placed next to it, unofficial names arose. One of them is "Inkwell".

During Soviet times, St. Isaac's Cathedral continued to be the object of myth-making. One of the pre-war legends says that America was ready to buy the temple. It was supposed to be transported to the USA in parts on ships and reassembled there. For this, the Americans allegedly offered to asphalt all the streets of Leningrad, which at that time were covered with cobblestones.

The second legend tells how during the siege St. Isaac's Cathedral turned out to be unharmed and was not damaged by bombing. When the threat of occupation of Leningrad by the Nazis turned out to be real, the problem of evacuating valuables from the city arose. They didn’t have time to take everything out, so they began to look for a place for a reliable storage of sculpture, furniture, books, porcelain... One elderly officer suggested setting up a storage facility in the basements of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. When shelling the city, the Germans were supposed to use the cathedral dome as a landmark and not shoot at it. And so it happened. During the entire 900 days of the blockade, the museum treasures lay in this storage facility and were never subjected to direct shelling.