The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennovo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is a church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia and is one of the most popular symbols of the country. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Собо́р Покрова́ Пресвято́й Богоро́дицы, что на Рву, Sobor Pokrova Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy, chto na Rvu) or Pokrovsky Cathedral (Покро́вский собо́р). It was built from 1555–1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. It was the city 's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600. The Saint Basil's Cathedral is not to be confused with the Moscow Kremlin.
The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight churches arranged around a ninth, central church of Intercession; a tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the church, perceived (as with all churches in Byzantine Christianity ) as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the tsar.The building is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no parallel in Russian architecture. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union 's anti-theist campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928.
