St. Basil's

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When you think of Moscow, what do you call to mind? Parades in Red Square? Grey skies and generals lined up to salute as rockets and other weapons file past on October 1st? Lines of people waiting to get in to see Lenin in his embalmed glory? Zillions of those little nested dolls for sale in shops on the street? Onion domed churches against the skyline? Well, some of these images formed in my mind too before we actually got to Moscow and saw it in its splendor but perhaps the most dominant image for me was that of St. Basil's Church with its oddly decorated onion domes against the blue skies. Our brother-in-law Glen visited Moscow years ago and sent us a picture of that church in the background with him in the foreground. Glen is NO tourist. As far as I know he has been to almost every major city in the world and has scarcely seen the city itself because he has been closeted with students or academic professions or peace activists busy discussing ethics or nuclear disarmament or peace initiatives or the imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount for ethical living of people on the earth. Glen is the academics academician. I was quite impressed that something had caught his imagination enough that he had himself photographed and then reproduced that picture and sent it to us for Christmas. So, Moscow was St. Basil's in my mind. The second day we were in Moscow our co-worker Alexander took us downtown to teach us to use the magnificent Moscow subway system and walked us around the downtown area. One of the glimpses we had that day from a side street was St. Basil's domes. Then the first weekend when we took off downtown on our own, our first destination was Red Square and St. Basils. It reminded me very much of my first sight of the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi'an, China when we walked though the gate and out onto the square and there, before my own eyes, was the church in all its colorful and wild glory! It was hard to believe I was really seeing it for real. We both just stood there with our jaws slightly dropped staring and shaking our heads. It was as wonderful 'in person' as it had looked in the photograph and then some!

We'll give you some of our book reading knowledge of St. Basil's church and let you see some of the photos Bill took of the exterior and interior. I don't think the blog can handle ALL the photos he took. Once he got started we returned three times and he went sort of wild moving from spot to spot to try to get all the possible angles of this colorful and imaginative architecture.

Named, or more accurately nicknamed for St. Basil this is the most famous church in Moscow. With its onion domes and swirls of color it is like a fairy tale church. It was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible after the successful military campaign against the Tartar Mongols in 1552 in the besieged city of Kazan. (Ivan had the habit of building some grand church or religious building after some of his most dastardly deeds or war victories.) The official name of the church is the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat. Aren't you glad the people nicknamed the church St. Basil's? St. Basil was very popular with the people of Moscow at that time.

The church sits at the edge of Red Square, at the opposite end from the Resurrection Gate. There are eight onion domes surrounding the central towered dome and they form an eight pointed star if seen from above. The number eight has religious significance as Christ rose on the eight day of the old Hebrew calendar. I wish we knew more on Russian Orthodox symbology. There are symbols in the architecture and in ever painting in the cathedral, almost all of which we do not recognize.

St. Basil's draws large numbers of tourists and there is an entrance fee. There is always a line of people waiting to buy tickets to tour the church.

We were irresistibly drawn from the end of Red Square to the front of St. Basil's. We hunted for the way to get in and the ticket office box. The time was posted as 'Opening at 9:00' and it was about 8:50. We stood and waited and at 8:59:50 or so a police type guard walked to the gate in the fence surrounding the church and at 9:00 on the dot he opened it. We were almost the first folks in line and we quickly got our tickets and headed inside. Nothing had prepared us for the way the building was decorated with paintings inside so we started to walk and gaulk and oooh and ahhh.

Inside there are nine chapels. After seeing the ground floor to get to the first chapel we had to climb a very narrow and steep staircase. As we approached the first chapel via the stairway, I thought, "That is going to be a dangerous staircase to go back down." Two women had squeezed past us as they climbed down the steps. --Nancy- The first of the two women was almost shaking with fear. I stepped up and held her hand and helped her to descend safely. She said, "I have a dreadful fear of heights." When we got to the top of the stairs (each step of which was at least 12 to 15 inches high), there was a large sign saying "This is NOT an exit." Since the woman was so obviously a native speaker of English, all I can imagine is that she didn't read the sign and didn’t realize she was exiting via the entrance. Actually the real exits that are not nearly so dramatic or dangerous.

Every inch of every wall is covered with beautiful paintings. The hallways are narrow and the chapels are small. St. Basil's is really not a large structure. In fact, the largest Orthodox Church we toured was in St. Petersburg. But that is another story for another entry .......
There are no chairs or pews in Russian Orthodox churches, so though the chapels are usually not large quite a number of people can attend a service.

Suddenly, as we walked from one chapel to another, Nancy heard beautiful Russian Orthodox music coming from another chapel. She took off at once, ignoring the other rooms and I followed. We made our way there and found the hallways crowded with tourists listening to four men sing. They had incredible voices. After singing a hymn they would take a break. Beside them were several stacks of CDs of their music for sale. Yes, of course we bought one.

Stalin had ordered the church to be destroyed in the 1930's. When given the order the architect, P. Baranovsky, threatened to cut his throat on the steps of the church. Stalin cancelled his order, no one seems to know why, and sent Baranovsky to jail for five years. But the church was saved. It would have been a dreadful pity if this most iconic of all the Moscow structures had been destroyed by Stalin's irrational hatred of anything religious. He did manage to destroy another of the most important of all Russian Orthodox churches in Moscow the one called the Church of Christ the Saviour--yet another story for another entry....

We almost played with joy as we walked from one small room to another, glanced out the windows, imagined ourselves back in history as we walked the narrow hallways from one chapel to the other, looked at all the frescos on the walls, listened to the echo of the liturgical music as it bounced from room to room. We basically walked through all the areas at least two times by cutting back and forth in the rabbit's warren of passageways. It was a most delightful way to begin our tourist experience in Moscow, inside this most famous of all spots in this previously totally mysterious city. It whetted our desire to see more and more of what Moscow had to offer. Little did we realize we had just barely cracked the top layer of all the wonders available for anyone with time and inclination (and enough rubles to pay the tourist costs) to learn more about Russia, Russians, history, the place of religion and Moscow.

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