Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Winter

St. Basil’s Cathedral and Minin and Pozharsky Monument

For those hungry for St. Basil’s Cathedral images, here are a few more photos, this time you can see the magnificent 16th c. church on a January evening. As you will notice in one of the photos, the weather being quite cold, even the air was frosty.

You are surely wondering about the small monument that stands in front of the cathedral. This is a group monument depicting a popular leader Kuzma Minin and the Prince Dmitry Pozharsky at the moment when they decided to lead the Russians against the Polish-Lithuanian intervents during the so-called Mutiny Time in the first half of the 17th c. 2012 celebrates the 400th anniversary of the victory of the volunteer army, funded by the Russian people, in the Battle of Moscow (1612). The monument was conceived and executed by the sculptor Ivan Martos and unveiled in the Red Square in 1818. It initially stood right opposite the current site of the Mausoleum, but by 1931 the Government had found it to be obstructing the passage for military parades, and so the monument was relocated to the courtyard of St. Basil’s Cathedral. In 2005 a smaller copy of the monument, cast by the celebrated Zurab Tsereteli, was erected in Nizhny Novgorod in front of the Church of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.

GUM Xmas Tree, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Mausoleum, and Spasskaya Tower

GUM ice-skating rink, GUM shoppin mall, GUM Xmas Tree, and St. Basil’s Cathedral

GUM Christmas Tree and Saint Basil’s Cathedral