page_title: Saint Basil's Cathedral
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Basil's Cathedral
caption_attribution_description: English: Saint Basil Cathedral in the Red Square in Moscow
context_page_description: The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is a Christian church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia and is regarded as a cultural symbol of the country. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
  The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight churches arranged around a ninth, central church of Intercession; a tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the church, perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.
  The building is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no parallel in Russian architecture.
context_section_description: The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is a Christian church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia and is regarded as a cultural symbol of the country. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Собо́р Покрова́ Пресвято́й Богоро́дицы, что на Рву, Sobor Pokrova Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy, chto na Rvu) or Pokrovsky Cathedral (Покро́вский собо́р).  It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600. 
  The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight churches arranged around a ninth, central church of Intercession; a tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the church, perceived (as with all churches in Byzantine Christianity) as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.
  The building is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no parallel in Russian architecture. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.
  As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929 and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. It is not actually within the Kremlin, but often served as a visual metonym for Russia and the Soviet Union in western media during the Cold War, to the point of being confused at times with the Kremlin itself by foreigners. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.
caption: Saint Basil's Cathedral as viewed from Red Square
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-H300", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "4.0000", "Image DateTime": "2018:06:29 12:21:35", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Copyright 2009", "Image ExifOffset": "308", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Make": "SONY", "Thumbnail Model": "DSC-H300", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10718", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8344", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "93/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:06:29 12:21:35", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:06:29 12:21:35", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "1732121/604520", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1911/250", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3217/500", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "317/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "MultiSpot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "54/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3864", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5152", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10542", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "60", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}