Officially St Petersburg's Church of the Resurrection of Christ, the 1881 murder of Tsar Alexander II dubbed it the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood. Its onion domes and ornate mosaics are a splash of colour beside Griboyedov Canal.
On this site on 1 March 1881 Tsar Alexander II was fatally wounded in an assassination by the People's Will terrorist group. His successor, Alexander III, ordered a cathedral to be built.
Alexander III's creation stands out as a unique slice of traditional Russian architecture amid Peter the Great's Western-styled, neo-classical city project. Alexander chose designs that harked back 200 years or more to Russia's pre-modern era, with onion domes and ornate mosaics emulating Moscow's St Basil's.
During the Soviet years the church fell into disuse, but its fortunes have revived with renovation as part of the museum of St Isaac's Cathedral. It reopened in August 1997, and now visitors can gaze upon the church's brightly coloured onion domes and admire the interior mosaics, including some created by Art Nouveau master Mikhail Vrubel.