St. Isaac's

Greetings once more from the beautiful land of St. Petersburg!

We have successfully finished our second week of teaching at IA and are feeling very good about the experience so far. Classes seem to be going well and we are doing well. The students seem to be happy (although that might change after they take the U.S. History test that I've written for Tuesday:-P) and are a good group.

This weekend Amanda and I have been taking advantage of the nice, fall-like weather that we've been experiencing. Yesterday we enjoyed a long leisurely walk down to the Neva and today we went to St. Isaac's Cathedral. St. Isaac's is the largest church in the city and the second tallest Orthodox Church in the world at a height of 101.5 meters(second only to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow). Wikipedia has a nice list of the tallest Orthodox Churches in the world that you can check out here since there are quite a few on the list that are in St. Petersburg! Unlike some of these other cathedrals, St. Isaac's lets visitors take advantage of its height by letting you take stairs up to the colonnade that circles the dome and walk around it. The view of the city is spectacular and is a great place to take photos of the rest of St. Petersburg.

The church was completed in 1858 and is the classicist style, making its appearance unusual for an Eastern Orthodox Church. During the Soviet period, St. Isaac's was used as the location of the state anti-religion museum for a number of years before being turned into a museum, which is the function that it serves today. It is a museum only in the loose sense that it is no longer a functioning church, although there is a corner of the church that is still set aside for religious devotion where people can come and light candles and venerate icons.

Reflecting the Western architecture of the building, the interior is covered in marble and all of the iconography follows Western European painting conventions, making the interior appear more like what one might find in a Roman Catholic Church. In having a more Western appearance than a traditional Eastern Orthodox one, St. Isaac's follows after other prominent churches in the city like the Peter and Paul Cathedral or the Kazan Cathedral and fits in well in this city that was built to be a "window to the West."

But enough details about architecture. Let's get to the pictures!
(You can click on all of these pictures to see bigger versions of them)


Here is the famous Bronze Horseman. This statue of Peter the Great was erected in the reign of Catherine the Great and has become an iconic image of the city. It stands near the banks of the Neva not far from St. Isaac's.


St. Isaac's Cathedral, rising up from behind the trees of a park that stands in front of it.


A closer shot of the exterior of the church. The base of the columns that circle the golden dome is where the walkway for visitors to look out over the city is.


The gorgeous, marble covered, gilded interior.


Taken standing directly underneath the dome. The height of St. Isaac's is higher than the U.S. Capitol building which has a similar dome.


The iconostasis.


This is the portion of the cathedral that is still in use for religious purposes.


I stood with my back straight against a marble column and held the camera above my head to take this picture of a portion of the ceiling.


This photo fails to do justice to the incredible size of these doors. This is one of the sets of doors that stand on each of the sides of the building. They are made of wood and cast in bronze and weigh over 20 tons.


The people in this picture help give a sense of the size of the interior.


Another glimpse at the richly decorate ceiling of the cathedral.


A relief of a pieta on the exterior of the cathedral.


We walked up these stairs to get to the colonnade. We both felt a bit dizzy by the end:-)


The colonnade around the golden dome.


Our city!


In this picture, you can see the top of the Spilled Blood on the left side and on the right you can see the dome of the Kazan Cathedral.


Looking down on the square with the statue of Nicholas I on a horse. We posted a picture of that statue in an earlier entry. This shot is looking down on the side of the cathedral opposite the river and the Bronze Horseman statue.


It's us! We tried to take a photo of ourselves that would capture some of the city behind us, but unfortunately were unable to do so. This means that you have to be content with just gazing upon our faces.


Across the Neva lies Vasilievsky Island. Here you can see one of the many cruise ships that come to the city. In the background you can see two office buildings that stand out above all of the other buildings. Between these two buildings is a park that is only about a ten minute walk from our apartment. Those of you with sharp eyes will note that this photo is a close up of the area of the city shown in the photo four above this one.

That's all for now. Keep checking back!

-Matt