Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral

This is the main building within the Peter and Paul Fortress located on Hare Island in the Neva delta. Peter the Great chose this location for its strategic advantages and to be the nucleus of the future city.

The cathedral was the tallest building in Russia at 122.5 meters at the time. The design of the church combined the typical Ancient Russian church design and western religious architecture. It has both carved wooden icons of the Orthodoxtraditions and carved pulpit for a preacher, as in a Catholic Church.

 

Toms of Alexander ll and his wife Empress Maria Alexandrovna. The sarcophagi are made of colored jasper by the workers of the Ural's plants as a sign of gratitude for the abolition of serfdom.

Tombs of Emporers and Grand Dukes.  The furtherest tomb in this picture is of Peter the Great who conquered the Swedes in the Northern War (1700-1721).

In 1998 the remains of Nicholas ll, the last Rissian Emporer, and members so his family were brought to the church for burial. He and members of his family were shot to death in Ekaterinburg in June 1918. Anastasia was not among with the  family members. She and her brother were buried somewhere in the woods and found many years later. Thus the Anatasia mystic.