Spatial development of Orthodox temple construction in Petrograd and its environs by 1917

Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 190005, St. Petersburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: s.sementsov@mail.ru

Abstract

The present paper discusses the results of comprehensive historical-and-archive, cartographic, bibliographic and morphological study on the development stage of Orthodox temple construction in Saint Petersburg and surrounding areas at the beginning of 1917. The integral spatial area of citizens’ seasonal life was identified, within the boundaries of which the common trend of Orthodox temple placing was formed. This area included Saint Petersburg, its suburban police districts, the nearest territories, called uyezds, and the following towns under royal administration: Gatchina, Krasnoye Selo, Pavlovsk, Petergof, Oranienbaum, Strelna, Tsarskoye Selo. This integral metropolitan functional area had in total 987 cathedrals, churches, chapels and kiots; particularly in Saint Petersburg there were 676 temples, which meant that approximately each twelve developed land plots had one temple. Such an extraordinary territorial density of placing temples formed a special multilayer system of visual and skyline composition of town planning, which completely differs from a modern one that appeared after mass destructions of 1920 – 1960.