The Saviour on Spilt Blood (The Cathedral of the Resurrection)

        This church is situated not far from Nevsky Prospect on the Griboyedov Canal Embankment and next to the State Russian Museum.

         It was built between 1883 and 1907 after the project of the architect Alfred Parland. The foundation stone was laid on the 6th of October 1883. This church was con­structed on the place where the Emperor Alexander II was mortally wounded by a bomb. It was on the 1st of March 1881. The member of the terrorist organization “Narodnaya Volya” (People’s Will) Ignaty Grinevitsky threw that bomb.

         The place where the bomb exploded was marked in the interior of the church. For this reason, there was made a special ledge for the bell-tower. Alexander III ordered to build a church in the spirit of the “Russian patterning” of the 16th and 17th centuries. That’s why this church has much in common with St Basil’s Cathe­dral in Moscow. The compositions and forms of St Bas­il’s Cathedral were used during the designing of the Church of the Saviour on Spilt Blood. This church was designed in the style of pre-Petrine ecclesiastical archi­tecture.

        The cubic foundation of the building is crowned with the traditional five-dome structure. It’s adjoined by the bell-tower with a gilded dome and two porches. There are a main dome and four little onion-shaped cupolas densely placed around it. The height of the church is

81 metres. The walls of the façade are decorated with fashioned bricks, colourful ceramic plates and glazed tiles with ornaments. The cupolas have bright colour­ful coverings. The crowning features of the façades are “kokoshniks” (decorative arched gables) with fancy­shaped window framings and colourful tiles. Different kinds of Italian marble and Russian semiprecious stones, such as jade, topaz, rock crystal and others, were used in decoration of the floors and interior walls of the church. Many mosaics, panels, and other details of the interior and exterior decoration of the church were made in the workshops of the Frolov brothers. They were created according to the sketches by the famous painters Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov and Mikhail Vrubel. Vasnetsov drew the sketches of the mosaics on Gospel themes for the pediments of the four exterior wings. He depicted “Carrying the Cross”, “The Crucifixion”, “Descent from the Cross” and “De­scent into the Limbo”. They are on the pediments of the church. Nesterov created the mosaic panel located on the northern façade facing the Neva River. This panel depicts “The Resurrection”. The mosaic panel “The Crucifixion” was made by Alfred Parland, the ar­chitect of this church. This mosaic panel decorates the western façade. The panel depicting “Christ in Glory” is the work of Nikolay Koshelev. It decorates the south­ern facade.

         There are 20 plaques on the ground floor walls. They tell about the most important events during Alexander II’s ruling.

         The church was consecrated on the 19th of August 1907. The restoration of the church was done at the end of the 20th century. Then the church was turned into a museum.

Vocabulary           

adjoin - примыкать, присоединять

arch – арка

blood – кровь

brick – кирпич

ceramic - керамиче­ский

common - общий

consecrate - освя­щать

covering – покрытие

crucifixion – распятие

ecclesiastical - церковный

explode - взрывать

exterior - наружный, внешний

façade – фасад

fancy-shaped - причудливой формы

fashioned – фасонный

feature - особенность, характерная черта

gable - фронтон (арх.)

glazed - глянцевый

gospel – евангельский

jade – нефрит

ledge – выступ

marble – мрамор

mortally – смертельно

mosaic - мозаика, мозаичный

ornament – орнамент

panel – панно

patterning – образец

pediment - фронтон (арх.)

plaque - мемориальная доска

plate – пластинка

porch - крыльцо, подъезд

reason - причина

restoration - рес­таврация

resurrection - воскресение

rock crystal -  горный хрусталь

saviour - спаситель (спас)

emiprecious stone – самоцвет

sketch - эскиз, набро­сок

spil – проливать

spirit – дух

theme – тема

throw – бросать

tile – изразец

topaz - топаз

turn - превращать

volume – объем

window framings – наличник

wing - крыло, флигель

workshop - мастер­ская

wound - ранить