Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood

The Church of the Resurrection of Christ was built in 1907 on the bank of the Catherine Canal in St Petersburg, where Tsar Alexander II had been fatally wounded in 1881. The building was popularly known as the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. The church was designed by architect Alfred Parland and archimandrite Ignatius in the Neo-Russian style, recreating the Muscovite architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Construction work was overseen by Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, uncle of Tsar Nicholas II and president of the Imperial Academy of Arts. The church had nine cupolas and could hold 1,600 people. It took twenty-three years and ten months to build, costing a grand total of 4,718,786 roubles and 31½ kopecks, which exceeded the original budget by over a million roubles. The official committee of investigation lay the blame on the conference secretary of the Imperial Academy of Arts, who was put on trial and sent to prison.