MOSCOW CHURCHES

                              A Few of Moscow's Churches

 Several times during our Moscow stay we passed by Christ Our Savior Cathedral.  The largest church in Moscow  was started in 1839 after the war of 1812, but took 44 years and the reign of four czars to complete. The first electric lights in the city were installed in front of this church. Stalin destroyed it in 1931 and it became a city swimming pool. The pool was covered up in 1994 and in 1995, financed with private monies, construction began on this new church. It took four years to finish the exterior and two years to finish the interior. The mosaics inside are beautiful. The church has five domes with a big central and four angular turrets with 14 bells. The church is so big that the main cathedral of the Kremlin can fit inside!

      
The white limestone Assumption Cathedral’s exterior dates to 1475. Five gilded cupolas sparkle atop narrow drums. The cathedral has stood for centuries as a Russian national shrine. Patriarchs have been anointed and czars have been crowned before her altar.  Ivan the Terriible’s custom-made coronation throne is housed within. Napoleon used the cathedral as a horse stable and its icons for firewood in 1812. The bell tower, holding 23 bells, reaches 264 feet into the air.

Archangel Michael Cathedral with its five domes was built 1505-08. Sarcophagi dominate the interior. The remains of every Russian czar up to Peter the Great rest here.

The churches are all Russian Orthodox, and it  was at the nine domed Annunciation Church where we learned a lot about the Orthodox Church. People attending church services stand,  with the exception of a ‘royal’ or ‘patron’ box, there are no chairs, benches or pews. Frescoes cover the walls, ceiling and columns in the church, and I swear there is not a square inch of free space! The frescoes in this church date to the 15^th century and were restored in the  17^th century. The frescoes tell the story of the bible for the illiterate.

The altar is hidden behind an iconostasis, which covers the entire front wall of the sanctuary. Icons are religious paintings that are usually painted on wood, sometimes on canvas. In the center of the iconostasis is an ornate door that opens to the altar. The second icon to the right of the door is of the saint for whom the church derives its name. The rows of icons is always an uneven number with five being the most common. The bottom row is ‘local’. The second row represents the district, the third row represents the feast and festival, the fourth row represents the prophets, and the fifth row represents the fathers of the church. Each of the icons is ‘framed’ with ornate gold molding making for a glittering wall. Russian Orthodox churches normally do not have statuary, angels etc as they are considered pagan. From what we could gather music is sung without the benefit of instrumentation.