Saint
Basil Cathedral is a former church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia. The
building now is a museum. It was built from 155 – 1561 on orders from the
Terrible Ivan and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. A world
famous landmark has been the hub of the city’s growth since
the 14th century and was the city’s tallest building until the completion
of the Great Bell Tower Ivan in 1600. The original building known as Trinity
Church and later Trinity Cathedral contained eight side churches arranged around
the 9th central church intercession, the tenth church was erected in
1588 over the grave of venerated local Saint Basil. In the 16th and
17th centuries the church perceived as the earthly symbol of the
Heavenly City as happens to all churches in Byzantine Christianity was popularly known as the “Jerusalem” and
served as an allegory of Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade
attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Russian Tsar. The building is
shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no
analogues in Russian architecture. There is not other building like this in all
Russia. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium
of Byzantine tradition from the 5th to 15th century a
strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling
interleaving of the manifold details of its design. The cathedral for shadowed the climax
of Russian national architecture in the 17th century. As a part of
the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox
community as a part of the Soviet Union’s anti – theist campaigns and has
operated as a division of the Historical State Museum since 1928. It was
completely and forcefully 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 often mislabeled as
the Kremlin owing to its location on red Square in immediate proximity of the
Kremlin.