A devastating fire...!


It is certainly the most beautiful church in Saint Petersburg and one of the most beautiful in Russia and in the world: The famous Troitsky Cathedral (Holy Trinity Cathedral)...:





The church was built in the plan of a Greek-Orthodox cross in the years 1828-1835 according to the plans of the Russian architect Wasilij Petrowitsch Stassow (1769-1848)...



... and was the garrison church of the Ismailovsky Guards Regiment...:



For this reason, her full name is also "Troitskj-Ismailowskij sobor".

Here we see an Izmailovsky parade in front of the cathedral in the early 1890s, still in the "Russified" uniforms worn by Tsar Aleksandr III. had introduced...:



After the Bolshevik revolution, the cathedral was completely plundered in 1922...



... and officially closed in 1938.

Since then, the building has been rotting away as an empty shell - only superficially maintained on the outside as a photo motif for tourists - the following picture is from 1970...:



In 2004, serious restoration work began to restore the church to its pre-revolutionary state.

On August 25, 2006, a major fire broke out on scaffolding surrounding the main dome...





... which caused the main dome, one of the largest and most important wooden domes in Europe...



... and one of the secondary domes to collapse.








The three other side domes were severely damaged by the fire.

The (partly original, partly reproduced) church treasures already stored in the cathedral could all be saved - above all through the courageous efforts of passers-by, who dragged them out of the burning building at the risk of their lives...:





Reconstruction began in 2007 and was completed in 2010...:





Today the beautiful building shows itself again in its old splendor...:

Hopefully Russians will be banned from visiting Europe so they will have to put up with looking at this instead of the cistine chapel. Putin is obviously doing a good job for russian Inland tourism.