Roberto Gonzalez
The Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul
After just entering the cathedral, apart from the excitement I felt to finally see the Tsars' tombs, I thought of a ship from the eighteenth century: the high altar wall was like the stern, the steep spire was like the mast. From a closer view, I could see what it said in the books, and the fact that it is not unusual for the steeple of an Orthodox church to have a clock in the tower. The height of this tower, together with the golden angel figure, the patron of the city, is 122.5 meters. At that time, of course, it was the tallest building in Russia. Peter the fist bought the clock in Amsterdam for 45,000 rubles, which was a huge amount at that time.
The history of the clock is very interesting: In the mid-nineteenth it played "Glorious is Our Lord", in 1906 "God save the Czar", in 1952 the anthem of the Soviet Union until 2001, when it was repaired by Belgian and Dutch engineers ve gave it a different tune. But once inside, do not forget that out of respect, no one can sit down, not even the Czar himself, so there are no benches nor throne under the imperial canopy or the rest of the church. In front of it is the podium with wooden representations of the apostles Peter and Paul, accompanied by the four evangelists. It holds the best and largest collection of paintings from the time of Peter the First. In the back is the carved and gilded iconostasis, like a triumphal arch symbolizing the Russian victories in Northern wars. Looking around ourselves we could see that the temple is like a pantheon for all the Russian emperors. They all lie under the same white marble sarcophagi. And only the graves of Alexander II and his wife Maria Alexandrovna, née princessa of Hessen-Darmstadt, are made of the Ural jasper and rhodonite, carved by local stonemasons in gratitude for the abolition of the serfdom. To the left of the altar there is a small chapel, where a quartet of musicians interpreted a lovely exhibition of sacred Russian music in a capella.
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