Sightseeing

TRINITY CATHEDRAL As well as the Preobrazhensky regiment, one of the oldest guard regiments in the Russian army , founded under Empress Anna Ioanovna in 1730 in the village of Izmailovo, the Izmailovsky regiment had a church of its own. Initially a field tent, in the course of the time it was transformed into a proper large wooden church with two altars consecrated in the name of the Savior of the Trinity, but due to the flood of 1824, the church was completely destroyed. And alongside the Preobrazhensky’s Transfiguration Cathedral, Nicholas ordered to build a new magnificent cathedral instead of the old ramshackle church, allocated funds for this purpose and assigned Stasov to design the new Trinity Cathedral of Izmailovsky Regiment in the late Classic style. On May 13, 1828, the construction of the Cathedral began. The characteristic features of the original church was preserved, and in 1835 a new five-dome structure in a shape of Greek cross with the domes crowning branches of the cross and oriented to the cardinal points rose across the Fontanka at the end of Voznesensky Prospect, one the city’s three main radial thoroughfares reaching from Admiralty to the suburbs. This building with its four porticos each of six Corinthian columns, and a magnificent sculptural frieze above the walls, statues of angels in the niches were by the sculptor Samuel Gahlberg, attached to the walls memorial boards with the names of soldiers of Izmailovsky Regiment killed in wars, came out much larger and even more solid tan the Transfiguration Cathedral. Consecrated on May 25, 1835 after the principal dome, ruined by a storm on February 23, 1834, was reconstructed and the metal beams were replaced by wooden radial structures, the cathedral was desecrated and plundered after the revolution of 1917. At first Soviet authorities planned to demolish the cathedral, than there was a blasphemous project of turning the cathedral into a crematorium. Luckily both these projects weren't fulfilled and for a long period of time the cathedral served as a storage-house, that caused the great damages to the cathedral's interior and exterior. And the Glory Column monument, consisting of five parts made of 108 trophy Turkish cannons with the principal battles and heroic deeds of Izmailovsky Regiment of the Guards listed on bronze boards, which was designed by David Grimm and unveiled in front of the eastern portico of the Cathedral, was dismantled in the 1930s - the Soviet Authorities considered this monument of Russian Glory to be a "symbol of Russian militarism"; besides the column was the hindrance for the traffic. The rich history of Trinity Izmailovsky cathedral features a plenty of memorable events: on the 15th February 1867 in this cathedral Dostoevsky married Anna Snitkina, who became writer's guardian angel; on the 6th of November 1894 the burial service over prominent composer and pianist A. Rubinstein was read in Trinity Izmailovsky Cathedral.

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