Sankt-Peterburgskaya Sobornaya Mechet'

This guide to the Saint Petersburg Cathedral Mosque opens in 1910, on the frozen banks of the Neva, where the aging Emir of Bukhara lays the cornerstone before ambassadors from Persia and the Ottoman Empire, a ceremony that turns out to be his last visit to the city. It follows his son Alim Khan finishing the project and opening the mosque in 1913, its cobalt dome and twin minarets deliberately modeled on Tamerlane's tomb in Samarkand. Soviet authorities later shut the building and filled it with storage crates. Look up at the dome and twin minarets as you approach from the bridge over the Neva.