MOST MAGNIFICENT CHURCH BUILDINGS IN THE WORLD

St. Basil’s Cathedral

The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat popularly known as Saint
Basil’s Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church erected on the Red Square in Moscow in 1555–
61. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and
Astrakhan, it marks the geometric centre of the city and the hub of its growth since the 14th
century. It was the tallest building in Moscow until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell
Tower in 1600.
The original building, known as “Trinity Church” and later “Trinity Cathedral”, contained eight
side churches arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession; the tenth church was
erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th
centuries the church, perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, as happens to all
churches in Byzantine Christianity, was popularly known as the “Jerusalem” and served as an
allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch
of Moscow and the tsar.
The building’s design, shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, has no analogues in
Russian architecture: “It is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the
entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to fifteenth century … a strangeness that
astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details
of its design.” The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the
17th century.
A victim of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as
part of the Soviet Union’s anti-theist campaigns and has operated as a division of the State
Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely and forcefully secularized in 1929and, as of
2011, remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the
Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. It is often mislabelled
as the Kremlin owing to its location on Red Square in immediate proximity of the Kremlin.