Smolny Cathedral

Smolny Cathedral is an Orthodox church in the center of Saint Petersburg, the compositional centerpiece of the architectural ensemble of the Smolny Convent. Its construction was begun by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, who conceived of building, on the site of the "Smolny House" where she had spent her childhood, a convent for a quiet life in retirement, as well as an institute for young ladies of noble families — the future Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens. The complex was designed by the court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli, and the ceremonial laying of the cathedral's foundation took place in October 1748. Construction proceeded on a grand scale — with as many as two thousand soldiers and one and a half thousand craftsmen working on the site daily — but with the outbreak of the Seven Years' War and the empress's subsequent death, funding ceased, and the building remained unfinished and gradually fell into decay for nearly seventy years.

The cathedral's completion took place only under Nicholas I: in 1832–1835 the architect Vasily Stasov repaired the structural damage and carried out the interior finishing according to his own reworked design, while preserving Rastrelli's appearance for the façades. The consecration took place in 1835, after which the cathedral received the status of the church of all educational institutions of the Russian Empire, named in honor of Empress Maria Feodorovna, patroness of women's education. The blue domes with golden stars and the snow-white five-tiered façades, executed in the Elizabethan Baroque style, made Smolny Cathedral one of the most recognizable buildings of the northern capital; however, the freestanding bell tower about 140 meters tall envisioned by Rastrelli, which was meant to surpass the bell tower of Ivan the Great in Moscow, was never built.

In Soviet times the cathedral was closed for worship, and from 1990 to 2015 its interior housed a concert hall for classical music. Today Smolny Cathedral belongs to the historic ensemble of the Smolny Convent, adjacent to the building of the Smolny Institute, which in 1917 housed the headquarters of the October Revolution and today is home to the administration of the city of Saint Petersburg.