Construction of the church began in 1883 during the reign of Alexander III, two years after the assassination of his father Alexander II. The church was dedicated to being a memorial to his father. A temporary shrine was erected on the site of the attack while plans and fundraising for a more permanent memorial were undertaken. #church #of #the #savior #on #blood #st.petersburg

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Architecturally, the cathedral differs from Saint Petersburg’s other structures. The city’s architecture is predominantly Baroque and Neoclassical, but the Savior on Blood harks back to medieval Russian architecture in the spirit of romantic nationalism. It intentionally resembles the 17th-century Yaroslavl churches and the celebrated St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. #architecture cathedral #saint #petersburg #russian

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The church contains over 7500 square meters of mosaics—according to its restorers, more than any other church in the world. The interior was designed by some of the most celebrated Russian artists of the day—including Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov and Mikhail Vrubel, but the church’s chief architect, Alfred Alexandrovich Parland, was relatively little-known, born in Saint Petersburg in 1842 in a Baltic-German Lutheran family. #church #mosaic #architect

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