Church of the Christ the Saviour 

The cathedral was originally built by a decree of Alexander I as a thanksgiving to God for saving Russia in the Patriotic War of 1812, and in commemoration of the Russian army's victory over Napoleon. Alexander I chose a project by Karl Vitberg. The construction of a three-tiered cathedral with three altars dedicated to the Christ's Nativity, Transfiguration and Ascension started immediately. In Vitberg's project there was a lower level church of the Christ's Nativity that supposed to be a burial vault for the Russian soldiers. When the Emperor saw the project he exclaimed in great excitement: 'You made stones talk!' and he ordered to start building the cathedral.

Vitberg wanted his great project to be sited in the Moscow Kremlin, but Alexander didn’t want to touch the Moscow’s heart, and proposed, in his personal opinion, 'the crown of Moscow' – The Vorobyovi Hills. In October 1817 the work began.  But after Alexander died all the work stopped because there was no money to precede the building. . Vitberg was exiled to the town of Vyatka, and his project was rejected. It seemed that Moscow itself was opposed to this project.

The new Emperor Nicholas I did not forget his brother's promise to build this cathedral in Moscow. But he preferred the idea of the Konstantin Ton. He wanted to build a mighty five-domed cathedral in 'Russo-Byzantine' style, that is, in the tradition of the Old Russian architecture. In 1832 the Tsar approved this project and went to Moscow to choose an appropriate site for such a massive building himself. He liked the picturesque hill near Chertolye, where the Alekseyevski Convent has been since 1547. From this place the church would be seen to all Moscow, and its closeness to the Kremlin would emphasise its deep spiritual links with the Russia's entire history. The Emperor ordered to move the convent to Krasnoye Selo that is outside of Moscow. During the preliminary works the bones of a mammoth were dug up, and this was considered to be a sign that the cathedral would be there for a long time.

During the Siviet Times the communist wanted to blow the cathedral up and build the house of council board and to place on its roof the 70-metre-higt statue of Stalin. But when they blew it up they found water springs there and off course they knew that nobody builds on water. So, they decided to build an outdoor swimming pool “Moscow”. It was really huge. But in 1996 when Boris Eltzin was elected as the first President, the cathedral was rebuilt…