Google, and it means the whole world, is celebrating 450th anniversary of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow today. The world is remaining to be in flux, and the flux today seems to bring warm Russian-America winds. What all this mean for us, remains to be seen.
Interesting to note – there were 721,000,000 search results on Russia and Russian culture were pulled by Google in 0.13 seconds, and 522,000 results on Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow this morning.
Here is more about Saint Basil’s Cathedral.
The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, popularly known as Saint Basil’s Cathedral, is a Russian Orthodox church erected on the Red Square in Moscow in 1555–61. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric center of the city and the hub of its growth since the 14th century. It was the tallest building in Moscow until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
The original building, known as “Trinity Church” and later “Trinity Cathedral”, contained eight side churches arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession; the tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and the 17th centuries the church, perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, was popularly known as the “Jerusalem” and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the tsar.
The building’s design, shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, has no analogues in Russian architecture: “It is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to fifteenth century … a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design.” The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.
The church has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929 and, as of 2011, remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.
Source: Wiki. 07.12.2011
Nearby architectural places: Kremlin, Red Square, Dormition Cathedral.
