CHRIST THE SAVIOR CATHEDRAL
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The entire Russian campaign and the following years of the reconquest of Europe created in Tsar Alexander I a strong religious feeling with messianic overtones that led him to carry out a pharaonic project of a cathedral dedicated to the Holy Saviour to thank heaven for helping him defeat Napoleon. The work was initially planned on Sparrow Hill since 1817 on the site of the French field camp, but it was interrupted when Alexander died. The architect then experienced the reversal of fate of a court life and was condemned to exile in Siberia... compromising the entire project. It was not until 1839 that the new Tsar, Nicholas I, approved a new cathedral plan, this time in its present location on the banks of the Moskva River. Gargantuan, the construction took more than 20 years, the cathedral could be consecrated only in 1860 and became the preferred place of Orthodox worship of the power. Ironically, it served for only 70 years and was blown up under Stalin's orders in 1931 to erect a monument to the glory of communism... a project which, after his death, was converted into a huge Olympic swimming pool. In the mid-1990s, the Moscow City Council decided to rebuild the building. Today, the huge cathedral and seat of the patriarchate represents the renewed Russian faith, but it is not popular among Muscovites, who find it expensive and ugly.
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