I’ve aWAYS BEEN FASCINATED BY THIS CATHEDRAL-ITS BEEN IN rED sQUARE SINCE THE TIMEOF iVAN tHE tERRIBLE. mY QUESTION-HOW LARGE INSIDE IS IT? AND THOSE COLORFUL CUPOLAS-WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THESE? sOMEBODY TOLD ME ONCE THAT sT. bASIL’S WAS NEVER INTENDED TO HOUSE A LARGE CONGREGATION-THAT IT IS ACTUALLY QUITE SMALLINSIDE.
aNYBODY EVER BEEN INSIDE?
I was there in 1992. Been a long time, so it is a little hazy. As I recall, it is not exactly wide open spaces once you go in. On the outside you see these towers rising up, and it seems big, but inside, it is dark and narrow. The cupolas- I don’t recall if there was a purpose to them, other than just ornate design. Inside, you could see straight up a good ways. I want to say I was told the reason for them, but memory fails me. Plenty of old religious icons and such inside. I wish I could give you some photos of the inside, but they didn’t allow flash photography, and being so dark inside, the non-flash didn’t turn out so well.
Well worth the tour, at the then-current price of three rubles (two cents).
I’ve been there, too, although it was in 1989 and I was completely sleep-deprived, so I’m also a little fuzzy on the details. Back in 1989, there was basically no religious content to anything I could find inside the cathedral, much less a guided tour with any sort of useful information; you were basically on your own. Nor did most Russian cultural sites or museums back then have things like gift shops, where you could buy books or postcards related to the site. Or at least if they did, they were well-hidden and/or generally out of merchandise. It was very frustrating to be inside the Kremlin armory and not be allowed to take pictures, nor buy a book of photos to take home. My grandparents are antique dealers, and they never could understand why the hell I wanted to go to Russia, but if they could have seen some of the amazing art there, they would have changed their minds.
I was also there in winter, so it got dark very early and we couldn’t see much.
Well, it wasn’t much of a tour in '92 either. About what you would expect of “organization” from the Russians, mere months after the fall of communism.
There were religious icons there by '92 at least. The whole place was rather dark and cramped.
If you still have those photos, you might want to try digitizing them and working on them with Photoshop or some such. Check out this site, which shows some examples of digital picture manipulation. One of them – the link should take you directly there – happens to be before and after shots of a chapel.
RR
I was in Moscow in 1995 as part of a high school exchange. Only one of our group actually went into St. Basil’s. The rest of us didn’t want to pay the foriegner rate, couldn’t convince the lady in the ticket booth that we were Russians, and had frankly seen too many damn Orthodox churches on the trip anyway.
The girl that went in said it was nice, but her pictures didn’t turn out, so I can’t really comment. It didn’t seem that much different than the other churches we saw.
i WENT THERE IN 1984, AND ALL i REMEMBER WAS ICONS ICONS ICONS ICONS. i HAD SPENT AN ENTIRE WEEK LOOKING AT ICONS. i WAS BORED OF THEM. oNCE YOU’VE SEEN ONE ICON, YOU’VE SEEN THEM ALL, imo.