My new favorite church!

That's it!

It's the Intercession Cathedral, finished in 1679, on a former royal estate  (and really a former royal hunting area) near what's now Izmailovskii Park.

Oh, wait.  I currently have fast wifi... AT HOME!!!  Why?  I found someone to replace me in the apartment, so E can have some more income this summer.  And she's already here, because E actually took off for the Crimea last Thursday morning, and she wanted to get DSL.  And she already had a wireless router, which she got to work today.

OH MY GOSH.  I missed having good internet at home.  I'm a bit embarrassed by that, actually.

But, anyway, what that means is I can point y'all to a link of where the church is!  You can see it's right in the middle of a larger building, right?  (You'd see big white wings to the sides of this picture if the trees weren't there.)  At some point in the mid-nineteenth century, they built a home for wounded/old former soldiers there, right up to the church's walls, and turned the church into a chapel.

The problem with that is this.  See that color work immediately under the domes, and then around the tops of the walls?  As best I can tell from where I was, that's all tiles.  And it's totally and  completely cool.  And the side buildings COVER UP part of it.  Wouldn't you think they'd building those buildings maybe just up to where that starts??  But no.

Anyway.

This church was built (or started) by Peter the Great's father Aleksei Mikhailovich (the Quiet, which is hilarious when you contrast that with Peter, who wasn't quiet at all).

But for some reason, there's a freaky damn statue of Peter at this complex of buildings.  Doesn't he look... kind of angry?  And also, it's crazy that they've got him wearing a cross.  Peter was deeply, deeply anti-religious.  One of his most famous pastimes was holding his Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, aka the All-Mad, All-Jesting, All-Drunken Assembly, which explicitly mocked church institutions (it had a priest-pope, bishops, etc., all positions held by people who were amusing to Peter in some way, and all of whom could drink vast quantities of alcohol).

So.  Yeah.  The worker garb's right, but the cross?  I just don't think so.

Comments

[Rosieo]

It really is beautiful! I liked the link - I zoomed out a bit and could seethe road ways.

[spudsayshi]

Thanks Mom! It's funny how I've now noticed that even on the big, very low-detail subway maps, the island that this is on is shown. I never noticed until I went there!