Church of the Three Hierarchs

On the Sixth Line of Vasilyevsky Island, next to St Andrew's Cathedral, stands the modest-looking Church of the Three Hierarchs — one of the oldest stone churches in the city, which served as a heated winter church attached to the unheated cathedral. The building's historic second name — the Georgian Church — became attached to it thanks to its longstanding ties with St Petersburg's Georgian community.

The idea of building a heated church beside the cathedral arose among parishioners as early as 1740: the cathedral's wooden building froze through in winter, and in severe frosts services effectively stopped. Empress Anna Ioannovna granted permission for the construction on 6 April 1740, and the foundation was laid on 2 July that same year to a design by the architect Giuseppe Trezzini, who had also built the cathedral itself. Owing to a shortage of funds the work dragged on for two decades — it is even known that some of the building materials were taken from the repair of the Persian ambassador's house in St Petersburg. The church was consecrated only on 17 September 1760, dedicated to the three hierarchs — Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom — with a side chapel of the Annunciation in the choir gallery, to which furnishings were transferred from the demolished house church of the First Cadet Corps, which had once belonged to Prince Menshikov.

The building is executed in the Baroque style, with pilasters and characteristic figured window surrounds, but has an unusually modest appearance: the church's dome is hidden beneath a common roof, so that the building resembles an ordinary St Petersburg house rather than a place of worship. It was precisely this inconspicuousness that helped the building survive the Soviet decades relatively untouched on the outside.

When the wooden St Andrew's Cathedral burned down after a lightning strike in 1761, services were held in the Church of the Three Hierarchs right up until 1763. By the start of the twentieth century the church held one of the city's significant collections of Old Russian icons. After the revolution, in 1918, the church was closed, and in 1929–31 the iconostasis was dismantled and the crosses removed. From 1932 to 1991 the building was occupied in turn by a knitwear factory, a hydraulic engineering laboratory and a household chemicals plant.

The building was returned to the parish of St Andrew's Cathedral in the early 1990s. After restoration work and the installation of new icons, the church was reconsecrated in 2001; today early liturgies are held here for parishioners. The Church of the Three Hierarchs remains a cultural heritage site and a reminder of the earliest decades of building on Vasilyevsky Island.