Crazy Ivan's Cathedral
1555 AD
1555 1555
30.39E55.45N
ARC

MOSCOW, RUSSIA
	To celebrate his victory over the Tartars in 1555, Ivan the Terrible of Russia ordered the construction of a cathedral in Moscow. When it was finished in about 1560, he heartily congratulated the two architects who designed the building -- then had their eyes gouged out. He wanted to make sure they would never again design anything so beautiful.
	Though it is uncertain if this story is true, it would be just the sort of thing Ivan might have done during one of his periods of insanity. Though a capable and fair ruler when he was sane, his periods of cruel insanity became increasingly common as his reign progressed.
	Ivan's cathedral, called the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, is an odd building located in Red Square in Moscow. It is made up of nine onion-domed and interconnected chapels, the larger dome representing Jesus and the nine smaller domes representing nine of Ivan's victories. The whole complex is painted a fruit-salad display of bright colors.
	Since Russian Christianity comes from the Eastern Orthodoxy of Byzantium (Constantinople), Russia's church architecture also has its origins there.
	Like Byzantine churches, Russian churches feature domes, but while the Byzantine churches had only a few domes (often five, with one large one symbolizing Jesus Christ and four smaller domes representing the writers of the four biographies of Jesus in the New Testament), some early Russian churches had as many as 13 domes (the main dome representing Jesus and the other 12 representing his 12 apostles).
	Also, while the Byzantine churches featured round-topped domes, the Russians built churches with pointed domes on tall towers, along with sharply-sloped roofs and narrow windows, perhaps to shed snow and minimize heat loss during the cold winters.
	The asymetric design of St. Basil's Cathedral, along with its wide variety of patterns and colors (red, orange yellow, green, blue, violet, gold and silver) once led people to consider it a barbaric and ridiculous piece of architecture. But today, it is generally considered a stunning example of Russian church architecture.