A cathedral born of empire and faith. Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in Saint Petersburg isn’t just a church — it’s a revelation carved in granite and gilded in light. Built between 1818 and 1858 by Auguste de Montferrand under Tsar Nicholas I, it rose from the swampy ground on 25 000 wooden piles — a miracle…
Inside Out: A Church That Glows From Within I’ve long toyed with the idea of turning a church inside out. What if the sacred mystery we usually hide behind stone walls could shine through for everyone to see? Orthodox churches have always carried this duality — austere and silent on the outside, radiant and full…
A doctor buries mistakes, an architect plants ivy. That old student joke came rushing back to me today with almost cruel clarity. After spending the day in Kansas City walking a potential site for a new Orthodox church design, I stopped by Holy Trinity Church in Overland Park, KS. I wanted to study the “competition,”…
This sacred space holds a story that had to be told. For the past few months, I’ve been completely wrapped up in a true labor of love: writing a book on the profound heritage of St. Tikhon, timed to honor the 100th anniversary of his repose. At the very heart of this project is the…
What if the tallest Orthodox church almost stood? Back in 1986, in what was then Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), a massive TV tower began to rise—sharp, raw, and reaching 235 meters into the sky. But time ran out before the project did. The USSR collapsed, funding dried up, and the structure stood unfinished, a ghostly spire…
Think you’ve seen it all in Orthodox church design? Then let me take you to the banks of the Seine, where something bold, beautiful, and unmistakably sacred rises over Paris. Opened in 2016, the Holy Trinity Cathedral isn’t just a church—it’s a whole spiritual and cultural center, a rare fusion of liturgy, diplomacy, and contemporary…
What do you really know about canonical church form-making? Ever heard of a church nicknamed “Kulich and Paskha”? That’s what the locals called this breathtaking ensemble the moment it was built in 1785—and the name stuck like honey to sweet bread. But behind this charming nickname lies one of the most original examples of Orthodox…
They Built a Log Church in Antarctica—Like a Giant Lego Set Yes, a real wooden church. In Antarctica. Not a hut, not a module—but a hand-crafted log chapel, hauled across the planet and assembled like sacred Lego on the icy edge of the world. The Holy Trinity Church stands near Russia’s Bellingshausen Station on remote…
A church too powerful for memory alone. That’s how locals remembered the Russian Memorial Church in San Stefano—now a ghost of stone and silence in the dusty annals of Istanbul. On a bright morning in 1914, a deafening boom tore through the air. When the smoke cleared, the sacred monument—once a crowned jewel of Orthodox…
From exile to eternity, his churches still breathe. Roman Verkhovskoy wasn’t just an architect—he was a soul in stone. Born in 1881 in the Russian Empire, trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts, he fought as a White Army officer under Denikin, fled to Yugoslavia, sculpted for kings, and then—at the age of 56—started from…