Russia 5. Moscow. Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Posted by IT (Sydney, Australia) on 6 August 2007 in Architecture.

The place where this Cathedral stands seems cursed :). Initially there was a wooden church. It caught fire and started one of the worst fires in Moscow's history. Some time later (after another fire caused by Napoleon), the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was built. People disliked it as much as we disliked Stalin’s high rises (see here).

Later Stalin decided to build the ‘House of Soviets’ in this spot. It was supposed to be the highest building in the world, with a huge figure of Lenin on top (some said that Stalin should have an office in Lenin’s head). So the Cathedral was demolished…

They run out of money, however, after the huge hole for the foundation was dug… Around 20 years after that, (arguably) the largest public pool in the world opened there…

The current replica was built in Yeltsin’s time… to build replica was (from my point of view) quite a stupid idea… But what is more important is that it stared a trend… since then a lot of old (and not that old) buildings in Moscow were demolished and some of them replaced by ugly replicas.

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