Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg

The gilded needle that rises over the Neva from Hare Island belongs to the first stone church of Saint Petersburg. Peter the Great had it built inside the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the Swiss-Italian architect Domenico Trezzini designed it; the foundation was laid in 1712 around a wooden church that stayed in use inside the rising walls, and the work was finished in 1733. Trezzini gave Russia something it had not seen: not a cross-domed church with clustered cupolas but a long basilica-like hall under a Western-style bell tower, a direct statement of Peter's turn to Europe. Topped by a spire with an angel holding a cross, the building reaches 122.5 metres and was the tallest in the city until 1962.

The cathedral is above all a necropolis. Nearly every Russian emperor and empress from Peter the Great to Nicholas II is buried here, in tombs set across the floor of the nave; Peter II, who died in Moscow, and the murdered Ivan VI are the exceptions. In 1998 remains identified by a state commission as those of Nicholas II, members of his family and their servants were interred in the side chapel of St Catherine. The Danish-born Empress Maria Feodorovna, who had died in exile, was reburied here beside her husband Alexander III in 2006. Next to the cathedral stands the Grand Ducal Burial Vault, built for the wider imperial family.

Do not miss the carved and gilded iconostasis, made under the architect Ivan Zarudny by the carvers Trofim Ivanov and Ivan Telega. Instead of the usual flat screen, it rises into a kind of tower over the sanctuary, a rare form for an Orthodox church. Above, the bell tower houses a carillon of 51 bells cast in the Netherlands in 2001, a gift from Flanders, which revives the one Peter ordered after hearing Dutch carillons on his travels; concerts are held periodically. The cathedral has officially been a museum since 1925, and services resumed in 2000.

Getting there

The cathedral stands inside the Peter and Paul Fortress on Hare Island in the Neva, about 1.3 km from the centre of Saint Petersburg. Pulkovo Airport (LED) is about 17 km away.