Cathedral sights in Moscow
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Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
This gargantuan cathedral now dominates the skyline along the Moscow River. It sits on the site of an earlier and similar church of the same name, built between 1839 and 1860, and finally consecrated in 1883. The church commemorates Russia’s victory over Napoleon. The original was destroyed during Stalin’s orgy of explosive secularism. Stalin planned to replace the church with a 315m-high Palace of Soviets (including a 100m-high statue of Lenin), but the project never got off the ground – literally. Instead, for 50 years the site served an important purpose: the world’s largest swimming pool. This time around, the church was completed in a mere two years, in time for Mosc…
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Kazan Cathedral
The original Kazan Cathedral was founded on this site at the northern end of Red Square in 1636 in thanks for the 1612 expulsion of Polish invaders (for two centuries it housed the Virgin of Kazan icon, which supposedly helped to rout the Poles). From here, the archpriest Avvakum Petrov led the opposition against Patriarch Nikon’s 17th-century reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church, thus starting the separatist Old Believers’ movement. Three hundred years later, the cathedral was completely demolished, allegedly because it impeded the flow of celebrating workers in May Day and Revolution Day parades. The little church that occupies the site today is a 1993 replica.
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