Spilt Blood Cathedral

Cathedral of Our Savoir on the Spilt Blood is one of the symbols of St.Petersburg. The official name is Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, most people refer to it simply as to Spilt Blood Church. People of St.Petersburg call it so because the Cathedral was built in memory of Tsar Alexander II exactly in the place where he was deadly wounded by a terrorist bomb in March 1881.

Alexander II was a Tsar-liberator, struggling to lead Russia to new political status through a series of reforms. One of his most famous decrees abolished serfdom in Russia. One of the projects he was working on was the Constitution. The fatal bomb put down the curtain to his efforts, and many people believe that it was the turning point in Russian history, which finally led to the Revolution.

Alexander III, the son of Alexander II and his successor, ordered the memorial church to be designed in the style of the 16th and 17th-century Russian churches – the famous style of his father. Therefore we have this stunning creation of architect Alfred Parland with colorful onion domes and intricate stone carvings decorating the façade, which very much falls out of typical St.Petersburg with its baroque and classical architecture.

The interior of the Cathedral is also unique. Inside the walls are covered with exquisite mosaics made to the sketches of best Russian artists of the late 19^th century. The mosaics cover more than 7000 meters of the surface of the walls and ceilings. The iconostasis is decorated with incredible semiprecious stone carvings. Carvings made of different kinds of jasper, decorate the canopy which you can see inside the cathedral. Under this canopy, carefully preserved by the architect, is the fragment of the authentic cobalt-stone-paved road and the iron rails of the Canal, which were once all covered with Royal Blood.