The Old Trinity Cathedral (also known as Peter's Trinity Cathedral, Троице-Петровский собор) was the oldest

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. It was there that

Peter the Great Peter I (, ; – ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...

celebrated the end of the

Great Northern War In the Great Northern War (1700–1721) a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern Europe, Northern, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the ant ...

in 1721 and was proclaimed the first

Emperor of All Russia The emperor and autocrat of all Russia (, ), also translated as emperor and autocrat of all the Russias, was the official title of the Russian monarch from 1721 to 1917. The title originated in connection with Russia's victory in the Great Nor ...

. It was one of the city's most cherished monuments until the Soviets ordered its destruction in 1933. The site on the

Neva River The Neva ( , ; , ) is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast (historical region of Ingria) to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length of , it is the fourth-l ...

bank is commemorated by a

chapel A chapel (from , a diminutive of ''cappa'', meaning "little cape") is a Christianity, Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. First, smaller spaces inside a church that have their o ...

. The diminutive church was built in 1743–46 as a copy of the simple wooden building commissioned by Peter the Great in 1709, with a bell/clocktower dating from 1713. Despite its small size, the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

considered it the main cathedral in the city, second only to St. Isaac's. In 1913, after a fire gutted the dilapidated structure, plans for a larger church building on the site were blocked by a group of history enthusiasts.

References

{{Authority control Russian Orthodox cathedrals in Russia Cathedrals in Saint Petersburg Demolished churches in the Soviet Union 1910s fires in Europe 1913 fires Buildings and structures demolished in 1933 1746 establishments in the Russian Empire Cultural heritage monuments in Saint Petersburg Anti-Christian sentiment in Russia

See also

References