St. Andrew

Saint Andrew's Cathedral was the last Baroque cathedral built in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The cathedral was conceived at the time of Peter the Great as the chapter church of Russia's first chivalric order, that of Saint Andrew. The most famous architect of the Nordic countries, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, was called upon to design a church resembling Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and exceeding 430 feet in length.

By the time Tessin submitted his designs, the tsar had died and the costly project was suspended. Two years later, Giuseppe Trezzini, a city architect to St. Petersburg, had the territory behind the building of the Twelve Colleges cleared from wood and built a modest timber church, which was consecrated by Feofan Prokopovich in the name of Saint Andrew on 8 October 1732.