Dormition Cathedral, Moscow Kremlin

The Dormition Cathedral is the oldest and most important of the churches on Cathedral Square in the Moscow Kremlin: for more than three and a half centuries, from the crowning of Ivan the Terrible as the first tsar in 1547 until Nicholas II in 1896, Russia's rulers were crowned here. A stone church stood on the site from 1326, but the building you see was put up in 1475–1479 by Aristotele Fioravanti, an engineer from Bologna invited by Ivan III after a Russian-built predecessor collapsed. Fioravanti travelled to Vladimir to study the twelfth-century Dormition Cathedral there and then built a larger, lighter version of it.

That mix of Italian Renaissance engineering and old Russian form is visible everywhere. Outside, the walls are well-trimmed blocks of white stone, and five domes stand on top — a design that became a template for churches all over Russia. Inside, Fioravanti replaced the massive piers usual in Russian churches with four slender round columns, so the interior feels unusually open and even.

Almost every surface is covered in frescoes, and the tall iconostasis, dating in its lower tiers from 1547, carries icons brought as trophies from conquered cities, among them a twelfth-century St George from Novgorod. Near the south entrance stands the Monomakh Throne made for Ivan IV in 1551. Moscow's metropolitans and patriarchs are buried here. After the revolution the church became a museum; the last Easter service was held in 1918, the moment captured in Pavel Korin's unfinished painting Farewell to Rus. Services have been held again since 1990, and the cathedral is visited as part of the Moscow Kremlin Museums.

Getting there

The cathedral stands on Cathedral Square inside the Moscow Kremlin, in the very centre of the city. The nearest major international airport is Sheremetyevo (SVO), about 28 km away.