Church of St Isidore

The building stands at 24 Rimsky-Korsakov Prospekt, in the Admiralteysky district, next to the Mogilyovsky Bridge over the Griboyedov Canal. This five-domed church was built in the early twentieth century for the city's Estonian Orthodox community. The main altar on the upper floor is dedicated to Isidore of Yuriev, the side chapels to Seraphim of Sarov and to the Apostles Peter and Paul, while the lower floor is dedicated to St Nicholas the Wonderworker — hence the name that has stuck to the church. The parish is still active today, with services held in Church Slavonic and Estonian.

By the 1890s several thousand Orthodox Estonians lived in St Petersburg, yet the community had no church of its own — gatherings took place in the basement of the Church of the Resurrection in Malaya Kolomna. The community was led by the priest Pavel Kulbush, on whose initiative the Brotherhood of Isidore of Yuriev was founded in 1898 to collect donations for building a stone church; the first contribution came from Archpriest John of Kronstadt. The design was entrusted to the architect Alexander Poleshchuk, who by 1902 presented a final version of a three-altar, pillarless building.

The building is executed in the forms of late-nineteenth-century Russian church architecture: above a cubic volume rises a cluster of five onion domes on blind drums, with three semicircular apses adjoining it from the east. The interior decoration was created only after the walls were completed — the Baroque iconostases were made to Poleshchuk's designs in the Abrosimov workshop, with icons painted by the artist Vasily Perminov. In the 1910s the altars were faced with white Carrara marble in Karl Guidi's workshop, and a stained-glass window depicting Christ was made for the altar window.

The foundation was laid in August 1903, but two years later construction stalled for lack of funds, and the walls were built only up to the vaults. Work was completed in 1907 thanks to a donation from the chairman of the building committee, Ivan Bogdanov, and a contribution from Emperor Nicholas II. The main chapel of the upper church was consecrated by Metropolitan Anthony in September 1907, and the lower church of St Nicholas by Bishop Kirill of Gdov the following spring. In the 1920s theological courses operated in the building; the church was closed in February 1935, and in the late 1930s its former rector and another priest who had served there were shot.

After its closure, the premises were converted for use as a kindergarten, a dormitory and a decorative-arts workshop, and almost none of the pre-revolutionary decor survived. The church was returned to believers in 1994, and the first liturgy was celebrated in the lower church that same autumn. By 2007, the centenary of the first consecration, restoration of the upper church was completed, including the reconstruction of the iconostasis and wall paintings. Today the building is protected by the state as an architectural monument of regional significance.

The Church of St Isidore is a rare example in St Petersburg of a church built for a distinct national community, and one of the few examples of the Russian style from the early twentieth century in the city. The parish maintains a library and a Sunday school, and the building's history — from a grassroots construction effort to Soviet-era repression and its eventual return to believers — makes it a notable part of the city's heritage.