Description of the attraction
One of the most monumental and significant churches in St. Petersburg is the Trinity Izmailovsky Cathedral. In 1730, shortly after accession to the throne, Empress Anna Ioannovna issued a decree on the formation of a new Guards Infantry Regiment, named Izmailovsky and became the third Life Guards Regiment of the Russian Army after the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky created by Peter the Great. In 1733 the regiment was transferred to the northern capital.
One of the primary tasks of the new regiment was the construction of a church. It was decided to make it marching, since the regiment did not yet have a permanent location. The temple-tent in the summer was placed near the mouth of the Fontanka River, in the village of Kalinkina, and in winter the guards prayed in parish churches. A little later, the regiment was assigned lands up the river, and then Archbishop Sylvester decided to build a wooden church for the regiment. In 1754, construction began on the wooden cathedral of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity in the settlement of the Izmailovsky Regiment. The temple was designed on the model of the five-domed churches, which have an equal-pointed cross in their plan. Domes in them were located on the cardinal points.
Time, and especially the great flood of 1824, severely destroyed the wooden church, therefore, with the personal funds of Emperor Nicholas I, who once commanded the Izmailovsky regiment, a magnificent stone church was built on the same place according to the project of the famous architect V. P. Stasov. the height of which was about 80 meters. The temple was built for 7 years - from 1827 to 1835. When developing the project of the temple, Stasov used the same principles as the predecessor church was built: the same Greek equal-pointed cross and the same principle of the arrangement of the domes - not diagonally, but over the arms of the cross, in the cardinal directions. The architect here combined the techniques of classicism with the traditional forms of Russian architecture. The domes were closely spaced, so from a distance they are perceived as a whole. The blue cladding, decorated with golden stars, on the usually cloudy northern sky of St. Petersburg, creates a joyful and festive mood. The building is painted with a magnificent sculptural frieze, four porticos of Corinthian columns and cast-iron tripods on the balustrades. All this gives it splendor and elegance. In the niches of the buildings are exhibited sculptures of angels by the sculptor S. I. Galberg. The construction of the Trinity Cathedral was rightly assessed by his contemporaries as a very significant achievement of Russian architecture.
Trinity Izmailovsky Cathedral accommodates more than 3,000 people. The main dome of the cathedral was the second largest wooden dome in Europe. Spacious, light interior. The 24 slender Corinthian columns that support the drum of the main dome, skillfully finished with rosette caissons, create the effect of floating in the air. The columns and pilasters inside the temple are faced with white marble. Small domes are painted with gold stars on a blue background, create additional domed interiors, one of which has a carved iconostasis.
In 1938 the cathedral was closed. There were plans to turn it into a city crematorium, fortunately unfulfilled. But the temple still fell into disrepair due to its use as a vegetable store, and especially during the blockade of Leningrad. After the war, extensive work was carried out to restore the facades of the building, completed in the 1960s, but the interior decoration fell into complete decline due to the endless change of users, who did nothing to preserve it. By 1990, when the building was returned to the Church and services were resumed in it, of all the richest property, much of which was unique and priceless from an artistic point of view, only the walls of the temple remained.
On August 25, 2006, the cathedral was badly damaged by a fire that started on the scaffolding of the main dome being restored. All the wooden structures of the central dome burned down, two small domes were partially destroyed.
By the end of 2007, the work on the small northern dome was completed, the consequences of the fire were eliminated, preparatory work was carried out on the installation of structures, using the glued beam technology, which was selected for the base of the main dome. In the spring of next year, the interior painting of the temple began, and the frame of the central dome of the temple was being installed. By 2009, the upper part of the iconostasis of the main chapel of the cathedral was repaired. Large-scale restoration and repair work of the outer walls of the cathedral is underway.
The Holy Trinity Izmailovsky Cathedral and the triumphal column-monument "Military Glory", restored near it in 2005, are the most beautiful of the historical military-church architectural ensembles. The cathedral is a monument of federal significance. This is one of the four high-rise historical dominants of the city, along with St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Admiralty.
