Dormition Cathedral
Renaissance-engineered five-domed cathedral where Russia's tsars were crowned for over three centuries.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow opens in the autumn of 1812, when Napoleon's soldiers rode their horses through these doors and turned Russia's coronation cathedral into a stable, stripping roughly three hundred kilograms of silver as they went. You'll hear about the one tomb they reportedly left alone, that of the sixteenth-century Metropolitan Jonah, and the legend residents still tell about why. It follows the stolen silver into Cossack hands as Napoleon's army stumbled home that winter, already melted down into bars by the time it was caught.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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