Anecdotes Plus: St. Isaac's Cathedral

April 2013

St. Isaac's Cathedral, St. Petersburg, 2014.

St. Isaac's Cathedral is one of my favourite churches. It likes St. Paul's Cathedral in London. When you look in front of it, there is a dome, a triangular pediment and a number of large marble columns.

The arched ceiling at the portico of St. Isaac's Cathedral,
St. Petersburg, 2014

As I walked up to few steps to the portico, I saw plenty of beautiful things I liked; side doors with bronze statues, an arched ceiling with a repeated white floral pattern, and even the bases of the columns were attractive.

Inside, I thought it was not only a church, was also a museum or art gallery. It is full of stunning pictures, some of these are exquisite mosaics, they caught my eye, many of them are quite large.

My guide asked whether I could count how many pictures of Jesus there were. I did not know the answer and she did not tell me.

The columns and the walls are inlaid with different coloured stone, and the floor is inlaid with patterns. I do not how many pieces of coloured stone were either.

Either the North or the South doors,
St. Isaac's Cathedral, 2014

The North and South doors were very impressive. Each one was 42 square meters in size and covered with bronze relief sculptures was depicting scenes from Russian religious history. If it was my front door, I could not move it an inch, because it weigh over 20 tons.

One of the scenes on the doors,
St. Isaac's Cathedral, 2014.

Another thing I liked was a spiral staircase in the bell tower. There are 262 steps. I don't know why I like spiral staircases and why I always count their steps. But unfortunately I lost count of the steps as well.

I suppose I should try to keep count of how many churches I have visited.