Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood
Revivalist church on the Griboyedov Canal lined with some 7,000 square metres of mosaic.
The church stands on the spot beside the Griboyedov Canal where Emperor Alexander II was fatally wounded by a bomb in March 1881. His successor called for a memorial church in a deliberately Russian idiom rather than the classical manner of the rest of the city centre. Alfred Parland's design, built between 1883 and 1907, borrows from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Muscovite churches, with a tall tented roof, five enamelled onion domes and elaborate brick, marble and tile facings. A canopy inside marks the paving stones where the emperor fell.
Almost every interior surface is covered in mosaic, about 7,000 square metres in total, made to designs by artists including Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov and Andrei Ryabushkin. The church was closed in 1932 and used as a store, suffering damage in the Second World War and the years that followed. Restoration ran from 1970 and the building reopened in 1997 as a museum monument within the State Museum St Isaac's Cathedral. It is not a parish church, though services are held on certain days.
Highlights
- Around 7,000 square metres of mosaic covering walls, vaults and domes
- Canopy over the paving where Alexander II was mortally wounded
- Enamelled onion domes and patterned brick in seventeenth-century Muscovite style
- Jasper, rhodonite and Italian marble in the iconostasis and floors
![Afrique occidentale française : Cathédrale à St Louis / [photogr. Eugène] Gallois ; [photogr. reprod. par Radiguet et Massiot pour la conférence donnée par] Gallois](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Afrique_occidentale_fran%C3%A7aise_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_%C3%A0_St_Louis_-_%28photogr._Eug%C3%A8ne%29_Gallois_%3B_%28photogr._reprod._par_Radiguet_et_Massiot_pour_la_conf%C3%A9rence_donn%C3%A9e_par%29_Gallois_-_btv1b532798828.jpg/500px-thumbnail.jpg)
![[Golestan, Le Salon et Fete de l'equinode, Teheran, Iran (le Pavillion du Trone)]](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/-Golestan%2C_Le_Salon_et_Fete_de_l%27equinode%2C_Teheran%2C_Iran_%28le_Pavillion_du_Trone%29-_MET_DP202918.jpg/500px--Golestan%2C_Le_Salon_et_Fete_de_l%27equinode%2C_Teheran%2C_Iran_%28le_Pavillion_du_Trone%29-_MET_DP202918.jpg)
![Théâtre de la guerre dans l'Inde sur la coste de Coromandel / par M.B.C.T. [Monsieur Bourcet Capitaine ?] ; gravé par Croisey](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Fort_de_Calicuta_-_btv1b59706294.jpg/500px-Fort_de_Calicuta_-_btv1b59706294.jpg)
