St Andrew's Cathedral

At the intersection of Bolshoy Prospekt and the 6th Line on Vasilyevsky Island stands the Cathedral of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called — one of the few surviving eighteenth-century churches in St Petersburg and the chapter church of the Order of St Andrew the First-Called, Russia's oldest state honour. The neighbouring Andreevsky Market takes its name from the cathedral, and the parish itself still belongs to the Vasileostrovsky deanery of the St Petersburg diocese.

In 1724 Peter I commissioned the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger to design a church modelled on St Paul's Cathedral in London, but the plan remained on paper following the emperor's death. A wooden church was built by decree of Catherine I in 1728–1732 to a design by Giuseppe Trezzini, and in 1732 it was consecrated in the name of Andrew the First-Called, in honour of the order worn by Empress Anna Ioannovna. In 1744 the church was elevated to the status of a cathedral, but in 1761 it burned down after being struck by lightning. A new stone cathedral was laid down in 1764 to a design by the architect Antonio Vista; during construction the vault unexpectedly collapsed, and the consecration itself did not take place until 1780.

The building is constructed in a transitional style close to Rococo and has a triconch plan, rare for St Petersburg churches. The main dome is surrounded by four smaller cupolas, and the main volume adjoins a refectory linking it to a two-tiered tented bell tower built in 1784–1786. The façades are articulated with flat pilasters, while the tall arched window openings lend the volume a sense of lightness. The interior's chief adornment is a carved, gilded, three-tiered iconostasis 17 metres high, executed in the style of the Rastrelli school and considered one of the oldest in the city.

In 1797, by decree of Paul I, the cathedral was given the status of a first-class chivalric church, and insignia of the Order of St Andrew the First-Called, supported by figures of angels, appeared above the entrance. In 1848–1850 the architect Nikolai Grebyonka added side chapels, and in 1857–1858 Alexei Gornostaev redecorated the interior. In 1878–1879 Alexander Krakau built a chapel and a fence beside the cathedral, neither of which survives today. From 1923 the church became one of the centres of the Renovationist movement in the city, and in 1938 it was closed by the Soviet authorities.

The cathedral was returned to the St Petersburg diocese in 1992, together with the adjoining Church of the Three Hierarchs, and the authentic eighteenth-century iconostasis survived intact in the interior. In 2001 an obelisk was erected by the cathedral walls to mark the three-hundredth anniversary of the Order of St Andrew the First-Called, and in 2002–2003 a large-scale restoration of the façades and interior decoration was carried out. Today it is a working parish church and a cultural heritage site of federal significance.

St Andrew's Cathedral remains one of the few monuments of mid-eighteenth-century St Petersburg architecture to have survived fires, closure and decades of the Soviet era with its authentic appearance almost intact. The combination of an architectural form rare for the city and a unique carved iconostasis makes it a significant landmark of Vasilyevsky Island's historic centre.