The five-domed Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel was the last of the great churches to be erected on the Kremlin's Cathedral Square and was the exulted burial place for the rulers of Muscovy.
April 7, 2006 (Press Release) --
The five-domed Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel was the last of the great churches to be erected on the Kremlin's Cathedral Square and was the exulted burial place for the rulers of Muscovy, from the Grand Duke Ivan I (1328-1341) to Tsar Ivan V (1682-1696), the half-brother of Peter the Great.The cathedral was built between 1505 and 1508 by the Italian architect Alevisio Novi on the site of an ancient cathedral of the same name. Unlike the very traditionally Russian Cathedral of the Assumption, the Cathedral of the Archangel clearly reflects architectural influences from the Italian Renaissance, including Corinthian capitals and Venetian-style shell scallops along the building's gables.
Also rather uncharacteristic of traditional Russian ecclesiastical architecture is the cathedral's asymmetrical layout, the differing sizes of its silver and gilt domes, the addition of several smaller chapels in the 16th century and the attachment of buttresses along the south wall when it cracked in 1773.
The interior of the cathedral is crammed full of the tombs of all of Russia's leaders from the 14th to the 18th centuries, excluding Boris Gudonov, who is buried at the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergei, outside Moscow. Amongst others, the Cathedral is the resting place of the Moscow Prince Ivan Kalita, who moved the seat of the Orthodox Church from Vladimir to Moscow in 1326 and who died in 1341, Dmitry Donskoy, the Russian leader that inflicted the first major defeat on the Mongols in 1380 and Mikhail Romanov, the founder of the Romanov dynasty which ruled Russia for over 300 years. Unfortunately, the tombs of the notorious Ivan the Terrible and his sons, Ivan and Fyodor, are hidden away in a chapel behind the iconostasis and not accessible to visitors. From the turn of the 18th century onwards, all the Tsars from Peter the Great onwards were interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, apart from Peter II, who died suddenly of smallpox in Moscow on the eve of his wedding in 1730 and was hastily buried in the Archangel Cathedral. The bodies laid to rest in the cathedral all lie in stone sarcophagi carved in the 17th century, to which bronze encasements were added in 1903, inscribed with their names and dates in intricate Old Slavonic script.
Source: http://www.google.com/www.moscow-taxi.com
Also rather uncharacteristic of traditional Russian ecclesiastical architecture is the cathedral's asymmetrical layout, the differing sizes of its silver and gilt domes, the addition of several smaller chapels in the 16th century and the attachment of buttresses along the south wall when it cracked in 1773.
The interior of the cathedral is crammed full of the tombs of all of Russia's leaders from the 14th to the 18th centuries, excluding Boris Gudonov, who is buried at the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergei, outside Moscow. Amongst others, the Cathedral is the resting place of the Moscow Prince Ivan Kalita, who moved the seat of the Orthodox Church from Vladimir to Moscow in 1326 and who died in 1341, Dmitry Donskoy, the Russian leader that inflicted the first major defeat on the Mongols in 1380 and Mikhail Romanov, the founder of the Romanov dynasty which ruled Russia for over 300 years. Unfortunately, the tombs of the notorious Ivan the Terrible and his sons, Ivan and Fyodor, are hidden away in a chapel behind the iconostasis and not accessible to visitors. From the turn of the 18th century onwards, all the Tsars from Peter the Great onwards were interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, apart from Peter II, who died suddenly of smallpox in Moscow on the eve of his wedding in 1730 and was hastily buried in the Archangel Cathedral. The bodies laid to rest in the cathedral all lie in stone sarcophagi carved in the 17th century, to which bronze encasements were added in 1903, inscribed with their names and dates in intricate Old Slavonic script.
Source: http://www.google.com/www.moscow-taxi.com
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