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Saint Basil’s Cathedral, an architectural treasure of Moscow

The extraordinarily beautiful and mysterious St. Basil’s Cathedral, or the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin, on the Moat, flaunting on Red Square, is one of the most significant monuments of ancient Russian architecture of the 16th century. Neither before nor after it was built any such structure. It looks like a vault of eight churches, which surrounds the highest – the ninth. Such a temple still does not exist anywhere else in Russia. Even the bright pattern of the domes of the cathedral makes it look like a blooming Garden of Eden.

Each temple has its own entrance and lighting, however, the cathedral is a single building. The complexity and amazing combination of details of the  St. Basil’s Cathedral are unparalleled in Russian architecture and had a huge impact on the development of Russian national architecture.

The cathedral was erected in 1555–1561. at the behest of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in honor of the conquest of the Kazan kingdom.  It is believed that the architects who created it were deprived of sight. Even Stalin did not allow the building to be demolished, and during the war the temple was hidden from shelling. The cathedral is included in the Russian list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is a branch of the State Historical Museum.

The upper tier of the cathedral resembles a labyrinth, and the base is an eight-pointed star. 

The cathedral unites ten churches (chapels), some of which were consecrated in honor of the saints, whose days of memory fell on the decisive battles for Kazan. 

The central church was built in honor of the Intercession of the Virgin , around which separate churches are grouped in honor of: the Holy Trinity , the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem , St. Nicholas of Velikoretsky , the Three Patriarchs: Alexander, John and Paul the New, Gregory of Armenia , Cyprian and Justina , Alexander Svirsky and Varlaam Khutynsky , placed on the same base-basement, and a chapel in honor of St. Basil the Blessed, after whose name the temple received a second, more well-known name.

The thickness of the walls of the foundation of St. Basil’s Cathedral reaches three meters. It is this thickness that allows it to securely hold as many as nine buildings. If you look at the foundation of the church, you can see that 8 small temples form an eight-pointed star – a symbol of the Virgin. There are larger churches in the ensemble of small churches. They are strictly oriented to the cardinal points and form symmetry. The main temple, with a huge dome and a tent, is the Protection of the Virgin, Her intercession.

During the campaigns of Ivan the Terrible to Kazan on today’s Red Square, “camping” wooden churches were erected in memory of the victories won.

On the day of the memory of Cyprian and Justina  ( October 2, 1552), the next campaign ended with a victory over the Kazan Khanate and the annexation of the city to the Muscovite state. It was, the day after the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, and Ivan the Terrible ordered to unite all the “marching” wooden churches into one stone temple in the name of the Intercession of the Virgin – Intercession Cathedral, but it stood only less than a year before to be dismantled, and finally a stone cathedral was laid in its place.

Already, in the autumn of 1554 were the first reliable mention of the construction of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God. The construction of this temple began in 1555 and lasted 6 years. The temple was built of brick, and its foundations , plinth and a number of details are made of white stone. In the western part of the cathedral there is a flat brick ceiling. 

A legend about the architects Barma and Postnik which names became known only in 1895 told that they had been blinded by order of the the Tsar Ivan the Terrible so that they could no longer build such a temple, but Postnik could not be blinded, since for several years after the construction of the cathedral he participated in the creation of the Kazan Kremlin.

By  1559, in the fall, the temple main part was erected, and at the same period, all but the central church were consecrated.

Despite the apparent grandiosity from the outside of St. Basil’s Cathedral the inside is quite small, accommodating a very small number of people during the service. That is because according to the plan of its creators, it should not have been too spacious, since during major church holidays the entire Red Square was the church, the place of execution, on which the clergy ascended, became a lectern, and the Pokrovsky Cathedral turned into the altar of an open-air temple. After all, there is no temple in Heavenly Jerusalem, but “there is only His Throne” … and the Intercession Cathedral – turned into an altar of a church in the open. 

 Finally, on June 29, 1561 according to the old calendar, the central Intercession Church of the cathedral was once consecrated in the name of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. 

The first changes to the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin, on the Moat, took place almost immediately after construction and were associated with the name of the famous Moscow saint – St. Basil the Blessed. Before the appearance of a stone cathedral on this site, there was a wooden Trinity Church, where St. Basil often came to pray. In 1558, a lower church was added to the Pokrovsky Cathedral over the burial place of the Moscow miracle worker – St. Basil the Blessed. To build this temple, the builders dismantled part of the original cathedral.

Some historians believe that the cathedral was originally conceived as a likeness of the seven-tower Blachernae monastery with the Church of the Virgin , in which the miracle of the Intercession once took place . By its presence and location, it was supposed to assert a new state ideology: ” Moscow is the third Rome ” , and the eight chapel was there because of the dimension of the foundation” . Others believe that the very idea of ​​a multi-chapel cathedral belonged to Metropolitan Macarius , who planned to recreate in the center of Moscow the image of the holy city of Jerusalem.

In the middle of the 16th century, the cathedral was painted in the fresco technique and imitated brickwork. There were no porches, and the St. Basil’s Church bell tower had a different look. It gave the cathedral a strict but elegant appearance which could be compare to a memorial with the eight separates churches symbolizing the days of the decisive battles for Kazan.

The original roof of the church burned downed at the end of the 16^th century and the figured domes of the cathedral appeared instead of the original roof.

The Intercession Cathedral is richly decorated with wall paintings, has an impressive collection of ancient Russian icon painting and masterpieces of church applied art. 

Until the reconstruction of the Great Bell Tower in the Kremlin in 1660, the cathedral was the tallest building in Moscow.

In the 1670 the wooden churches on Red Square were closed, then the cathedral was supplemented by a hipped bell tower, its heads were covered with iron, the porch  was covered with tiles , and a bright colorful ornamental painting appeared on the cathedral. Finally the chapel of Blessed John of Moscow was added in 1672

The cathedral was seriously renovated in 1680, with brick galleries replacing the wooden ones and the outer and inner galleries, platforms and parapets of the porches being painted with grass ornaments motifs.

In the 18 and 19 centuries Divine services were regularly performed in St. Basil’s Cathedral. As a rule, they were performed in an annex – a temple built in honor of St. Basil the Blessed, because the rest of the temples were cold. That is why the people got accustomed to the name – St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Divine services in the temple continued until the beginning of the 20th century. The last rector was Father John Vostorgov, now canonized among the saints in the host of new martyrs and confessors

In 1737, the temple almost completely burned out because of one of the strongest fires in Moscow. The restoration of the architecture and interiors of the cathedral was done under the leadership of the architect Ivan Michurin.

The cathedral was seriously repaired and rebuilt by decree of Catherine II from 1784 to 1786, and it was then that the walls of St. Basil’s Cathedral were painted with multi-colored paints and acquired their modern look. Before it was mainly painted in red and white colors.

After the Patriotic War of 1812, Alexander I decided to restore the temple and in 1817, the architect Osip Bove , while reconstructing Red Square with shopping malls, laid out the retaining wall of the temple with “wild” stone and installed a cast-iron fence. First along Moskvoretskaya Street, then in 1834, on the south side of the temple.

 In 1880, a manor on Pyatnitskaya street was added to the temple . Until 1918, the last rector of the temple , Father John lived in it . 

In the 1890s, the temple was again seriously reconstructed. The floors were strengthened, and the Cathedral sacristy was decorated with colored stained-glass windows, designed by the architect Andrei Pavlinov. 

In 1918, the Intercession Cathedral became one of the first cultural objects taken under state protection as a monument of national and world significance. It is during this period that services were stopped in the upper churches and the museumification began. 

Archpriest John Kuznetsov became the first caretaker of the museum. In the 1920s, the cathedral was in dear need of repair and restoration work was carried out, led by architects Nikolai Kurdyukov and Alexander Alexandrovich Zhelyabuzhsky.

After the decision of 1923 to establish a historical and architectural museum in the cathedral, this one was opened to visitors on May 21, 1923.

Beginning in 1923 and until 1949 research was carried out in the museum because of legends which attributed to the temple a network of underground passages. And in 1924, walled-up room with a deep hole in the floor under the chapel of John the Merciful was found by the restorer and architect Dmitry Sukhov and the speleologist-historian Ignatius Stelletsky.

The window-loopholes of the room were bricked up both from the side of the river and from the side of Red Square. Ignatius Stelletsky wrote that the embrasures had the same approaches as for the cannons in the towers of Kitay-gorod and any of the monasteries which led him to the idea that in the 16th century the lower part of St. Basil’s Cathedral was intended for combat.

The Pokrovsky Cathedral museum became a branch of the State Historical Museum in 1928 and in 1929 the divine services were banned in the cathedral, and the bells were removed and melted down.

During the Great Patriotic War, the museum did not stop its work, although it was closed to visitors. St. Basil’s Cathedral was carefully disguised to save it from bombing. There is a legend that after the war, Stalin was offered to remove the cathedral under the pretext that it was interfering with the parade. It is believed that Kaganovich showed Stalin a model of the square, and in his presence he removed the model of the temple, suggesting that it be demolished. Stalin abruptly interrupted him: “Lazar, put it in its place!” Since then, no one has raised questions about the inviolability of the cathedral.

The cathedral began to be restored, on September 7, 1947, and the museum reopened on the day of the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Moscow.

From 1954 to 1955 the “brick-like” painting of the 16th century was returned to the cathedral, and at the same time the white-stone details of the décor was restored.

On November 18, 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church was allowed to hold regular services in the Kremlin cathedrals and St. Basil’s Cathedral but the first divine service took place on the patronal feast of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on October 1,  1991

Beginning in 2001 and ending ten years later the interiors of ten churches were restored, the icon of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos was restored, and the basements were restored to their original appearance.

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