Stop 4 on our Baltic Sea cruise was St. Petersburg, Russia! In this video, we did a bus tour of three major cathedrals in the city.
In late summer 2019, we took a Baltic Sea cruise on the Norwegian Getaway. We booked a bus tour of St. Petersburg, Russia through Norwegian Cruise Line. Our first stop was the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. This bright gold-painted cathedral was right in the heart of the city, located in the Peter and Paul fortress. Built between 1712 and 1733, it’s the city’s first and oldest landmark. It’s iconic gold-painted spire is 404 feet tall (123 meters) making its bell tower one of the world’s tallest. Since St. Petersburg didn’t have super tall skyscrapers, it was easy to see this central landmark from nearly anywhere in the city. Another significant fact was that most Russian emperors and empresses, including Peter the Great, were buried at this church. We first thought the tombstones were the coffins since they were so huge. I loved the colors inside this cathedral – the green and gold was an interesting choice that worked so well. And lastly, one of my highlights during my two-day visit of Russia was finding a random cat just taking a nap inside this cathedral! Apparently the Russians love cats too.
Next up was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, which got its name since it was built on the site where political nihilists fatally wounded Emperor Alexander II in 1881. Unfortunately there was a little bit of scaffolding on the exterior due to remodeling, but you still couldn’t miss its iconic “onion” domes – also known as “pseudo-Russian” style. This cathedral was finished in 1907, and its interior was covered in super-detailed mosaics of biblical scenes and figures. These mosaics looked like paintings, but when you looked at them up close you could see the individual pieces. It was incredible to see the entire interior covered in these intricate mosaics, and the church’s restoration team believes the church has the largest area of mosaics of any church in the world.
Our last spot to visit was St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which was found downtown and had huge red-granite columns (112 of them!), a gilded dome, and huge bronze doors, covered in reliefs. This was certainly the largest of the three churches we visited that day, and we found out the site is currently used as a museum. Apparently the neoclassical dome influenced the architecture of the dome of the U.S. Capitol building. In addition to being gilded, the dome is based on a supporting cast iron structure, making it only the third in the world constructed in this way. The cathedral required a lot of architectural innovation, also making it notorious for taking forever to construct – over 40 years – finally being completed in 1858. Like the Church on Spilled Blood before it, this cathedral had tons of mosaics adorned throughout, mostly on ceilings and walls that required you to look upward. And before we left, we took a look at those huge bronze doors that looked incredibly heavy and extremely detailed.
And that was our first day in Russia! These three churches only took up a half-day tour, which was fine since we had a full-day tour of Peterhof Palace the next day.
