SAINT BASIL’S CATHEDRAL

Description

Essentials about Saint Basil’s Cathedral in brief

Next to the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral is the architectural highlight and the most frequent postcard motif of Moscow. With its colorful facade and its colorful and playful onion domes, the cathedral is one of the landmarks and, of course, one of the most popular photo motifs of the Russian capital. Since 1990, the ensemble of the Kremlin with St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Red Square has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The name of Saint Basil’s Cathedral

Saint Basil’s Cathedral is hardly known to anyone under its official name “Cathedral of the Protection and Intercession of the Virgin”. Its unofficial name, which Basil owes to the Blessed, an ascetic jester popular with Muscovites and Tsars alike, who died around the same time as the cathedral was built, still persists today.

The history of Saint Basil’s Cathedral

The history of the cathedral dates back to 1552 when the Church of the Holy Trinity was built in honor of the victory of the Russian army over the Tatars in the Moscow-Kazan Wars. Only three years later the church built of wood was demolished and the construction of the cathedral was started by the order of the first tsar of Russia, the infamous Ivan IV “the Terrible”.

According to a legend, after the completion of the construction in 1561, Ivan asked the architect Yakovlev if he would be able to build such a beautiful cathedral again. Yakovlev answered that he could build much more beautiful cathedrals. Thereupon the tsar is said to have lived up to his epithet and had the architect’s eyes gouged out so that he could not build something of comparable beauty elsewhere. However, the legend is fictitious, since Yakovlev later demonstrably built many buildings in several cities, and the chapel in honor of Basil the Blessed was also added by Yakovlev himself four years after Ivan’s death in Saint Basil’s Cathedral.

Particularly striking are the cathedral’s nine main domes, all different from each other in appearance and color scheme, with the tallest reaching 115 meters into the Moscow sky. St. Basil’s Cathedral itself, however, is built entirely of plain red brick and, unlike many Russian churches, is not painted on the outside.

Originally, the cathedral had a completely different appearance: It was white and all the domes were coated with gold leaf. However, in the course of numerous restorations in the 16th and 17th centuries, the cathedral was repeatedly redesigned. The chapel in honor of St. Basil the Blessed, to whom the overall structure owes its current name, was built in 1588 over his tomb on the eastern side of the cathedral. In the 17th century, other asymmetrical annexes were added, the main entrances were roofed and decorated with numerous ornaments, eight of the golden domes were replaced by the present ones, and the uniform white plaster gave way to the interplay of white and red.

The architecture of Saint Basil’s Cathedral

At first glance, St. Basil’s Cathedral appears to be a colorful jumble of onion domes, staircases, galleries and walkways. Since the cathedral is not at a right angle to the Red Square, it usually appears asymmetrical, even somewhat chaotic, in photos. Viewed from the inside, however, one can see a strong symmetry. The main church is built as a quadrangle, above which rises an octagon that narrows towards the top and is crowned by a golden dome. Four medium-sized steeples around the main church are octagonal and point in four cardinal directions. The four small towers are quadrangular and lie diagonally between them, so that the building has an eight-pointed star ground plan.

The frequent use of the numbers four and eight is based on the deep religious significance of these two numbers in the Middle Ages. Four is the number of the world elements and thus stands for everything earthly. Eight refers to the day of Christ’s resurrection as well as the day of the Last Judgment and symbolizes the transition to a higher sphere of the world. The two intersecting squares of St. Basil’s Cathedral, forming an eight-pointed star, symbolize the firmness of faith, the four Gospels preaching to all points of the compass, that is, to the whole world. The star points the way to Holy Jerusalem and connects heaven and earth.

The churches of Saint Basil’s Cathedral

Absolutely unique is that under each of the nine domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral a separate church is hidden. In the center is the actual Church of the Protection and Intercession of the Virgin Mary, crowned by the golden dome. At each of the eight corners another church is attached to it, starting from the east clockwise: the Church of the Holy Trinity, the Church of Alexander Svirski, the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Church of Varlaam Chutynski, the Church of the Entry into Jerusalem, the Church of Gregory the Illuminator, the Church of St. Cyprian and Justina and the Church of the Three Patriarchs of Constantinople.

The eight churches represent the eight most important battles for the Tatar capital of Kazan. Some of the churches were each intended for only one particular member of the tsar’s family. The symbolic meaning of the onion domes, which some see as symbolizing the turbans of the defeated Tatars, is disputed among historians.

The planned destruction of the Saint Basil’s Cathedral

St. Basil’s Cathedral was to be destroyed several times in the course of history. Napoleon is said to have been so impressed by its appearance that he wanted to take it with him to Paris. When this did not work, he is said to have given the order to blow up the cathedral shortly before the French troops fled. Whether a sudden rain extinguished the fuses or the French, in the rush to retreat, did not have time to blow it up, cannot be determined today.

Things were also bad for St. Basil’s Cathedral in 1936. During the redesigning of the Red Square to enable larger military parades, the cathedral stood in the way of the communists and was therefore to be demolished. Fortunately, this was prevented by Stalin himself. During the second demolition attempt, architect and restorer Petr Baranovsky saved the cathedral. When he was tasked with measuring the cathedral and preparing a proposal for demolition, Baranowsky refused. He reportedly locked himself in the cathedral and declared that he wanted to be blown up with it. The restorer’s determination forced the Communists to abandon their plans for destruction (Baranowsky was nevertheless sentenced to several years in a labor camp soon after).

Saint Basil’s Cathedral as a museum

Since the Communist takeover in the 1920s, St. Basil’s Cathedral has no longer been used as a place of worship, but has the status of a museum and is now formally a branch of the State Historical Museum (whose headquarters are directly across the street at the other end of the Red Square). In addition to the actual architecture, frescoes and iconostases, the cathedral houses, among other things, a permanent exhibition of weapons from the time of Ivan the Terrible and Russia’s largest collection of bells. However, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, religious services have been held in the cathedral again at irregular intervals.