Saint Basil's Cathedral

The Cathedral of the Intercession, known the world over as Saint Basil's Cathedral, stands at the southern end of Red Square, right by the slope down to the Moskva River. It was built in 1555-1561 on a vow of Ivan the Terrible in memory of the taking of Kazan, and each chapel is dedicated to the saint on whose feast day one of the campaign's victories fell. Instead of a single building the architects put up nine separate churches on a common undercroft: the central tented pillar of the Intercession of the Mother of God is surrounded by eight towers linked by a walk-around gallery. The many-coloured painting of the domes appeared much later than the original design, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; at first the cathedral was white with golden cupolas. Its present name comes from the popular veneration of the holy fool Basil, buried by the north-eastern wall; a tenth chapel, the only heated one, was added over his grave in 1588, which is why services went on here all year round. From close up you can see that no dome repeats its neighbour: each has its own spiral, facet or scaling. From Vasilyevsky Spusk the cathedral opens up whole, together with the Kremlin wall and the Spasskaya Tower.

On the map