When first hearing of this church in St. Petersburg, I erroneously thought it referred to Christ's blood. In reality it refers to the blood of Tzar Alexander II, the great liberator of Russia, who was killed by revolutionaries 20 years to the day after he freed the serfs. His plans for a constitutional monarchy were abandoned and Russia became more repressive under his son Alexander III and grandson Nicholas II, who were aiming to keep their own blood from spilling. We know how that turned out.
During our stay, we must have passed this church 10 - 15 times and each and every time I felt compelled to take more photographs of it, to take photos of every conceivable angle. So here is a visual essay of the exterior with its magnificent domes and mosaics:
With an exterior this colorful and decorative, one has to wonder about the interior. It was well worth the investment of purchasing a ticket to find out. As I walked through the door, the first section was dark and the mosaics were eerily reminiscent of those in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia built in Ravenna Italy in the 5th century. The top photo is of a star pattern from the Ravenna mosaics.
As you turn toward the central interior, the theme changes dramatically and becomes a modern interpretation of biblical stories done in bright, rich colors dominated by gold and a Maxfield Parrish range of blues and greens.
As unlikely as it may seem, I'm actually only showing a portion of the photos taken in this church. Every nook and cranny was filled with mosaics and I don't believe that any surface was painted. Another fascinating aspect of the architecture was that you could look through levels of the ceiling to see mosaics on the undersurfaces of each dome.
Here are a few more photos to show some of the other architectural details.
1 comment:
Utterly beautiful.
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