[A panoramic view of Saint Isaakievskiy Sobor and the Monument to Nicholas I on St Isaac's Square ]. N° 22.

Uncommon print of Saint Isaakievskiy Sobor and the Monument to Nicholas I on St Isaac's Square.
Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor in Saint Petersburg, Russia is the largest cathedral (sobor) in the city and was the largest church in Russia when it was built. It is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great who had been born on the feast day of that saint. The church on St Isaac's Square was ordered by Tsar Alexander I, to replace an earlier Rinaldiesque structure. Designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand (1786-1858), who had studied in the atelier of Napoleon's designer, Charles Percier. The cathedral took 40 years to construct, under Montferrand's direction, from 1818 to 1858.
The severe neoclassical exterior expresses a traditional Russian-Byzantine formula: a Greek-cross ground plan with a large central dome and four subsidiary domes. It is similar to Andrea Palladio's Villa La Rotonda, with a full dome on a high drum substituted for the Villa's low central saucer dome. The design of the cathedral in general and the dome in particular later influenced the design of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. and the Cathedral in Helsinki.
The exterior is faced with gray and pink stone, and features a total of 112 red granite columns with Corinthian capitals, each hewn and erected as a single block: 48 at ground level, 24 on the rotunda of the uppermost dome, 8 on each of four side domes, and 2 framing each of four windows. 24 statues gaze down from the roof, and another 24 from the top of the rotunda.
The Monument to Nicholas I is a bronze equestrian monument of Nicholas I of Russia on St Isaac's Square in front of Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Unveiled on June 25, 1859, the statue was a technical wonder of its time, it spans six meters and was the first equestrian statue in the world with merely two support points (the rear hoofs of the horse). The Neo-Baroque monument to the Russian ruler Nicholas I was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand in 1856. At the personal request of his successor Alexander II, Nicholas was represented as a prancing knight. Around the base are allegorical statues modeled on Nicholas I's daughters and personifying virtues.
The monument to Nicholas I depicts a determined absolutist Russian ruler as a powerful military figure. The pedestal stands on a short platform made of red Finnish granite with three steps. The lower part of the pedestal is of dark gray granite and red porphyry. The middle part, hewn from a block of red Finnish granite, is decorated with bronze bas-reliefs. The upper part of the pedestal is made of red porphyry. The pedestal of the horse statue is made of white Italian marble.
The monument's technical proficiency was cited as a reason why this statue - the only one from a cluster of outdoor sculptures representing the 19th-century Russian royalty - survived the Soviet period virtually intact.