Morskoy Sobor Svyatitelya Nikolaya Chudotvortsa
Neo-Byzantine naval memorial church with a vast golden dome, its marble walls once carved with drowned sailors' names.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Naval Cathedral of St Nicholas in Saint Petersburg follows a hidden dome: in 1953 Soviet builders sealed a false ceiling over the nave, turning a cathedral built in 1913 as a memorial to drowned Russian sailors into a cinema and then a concert hall. It traces the building's renaming from New Star to Maxim Gorky, the marble walls once carved with sailors' names, and the damage the dome took from artillery fire in the Second World War. Listen inside the nave, looking straight up at the ceiling above you.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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