Cathedrals & Monasteries - Moscow Travel Guide

Anyone who witnesses an Orthodox liturgy for the first time will be struck by its frank appeal to the senses. The central actions of the Liturgy are, to be sure, the consecration and distribution of the bread and wine that constitute the Lord's Body and Blood.

The Orthodox church building is nothing more (or less) than the architectural setting for the Liturgy. Originally, converted houses served the purpose. The history of the church as a conspicuous structure begins with the official toleration of Christianity by Constantine the Great in 313, although there is evidence that sizeable churches existed before his time in some large cities. In the fourth and fifth centuries, buildings were erected to facilitate baptism (baptistries) and burial (mausolea) and to commemorate important events in the lives of Christ and the saints (martyria); but it was the building designed primarily to accommodate the celebration of the Eucharist that became the typical Christian structure - the church as we think of it today.

The Basilica
As early as the fifth century, church plans varied from one part of the Empire to another. But most were basilicas, long rectangular structures divided into three or five aisles by rows of columns running parallel to the main axis, with a semi-cylindrical extension - an apse - at one end (usually the eastern) of the nave, or central aisle. The altar stood in front of the apse. The flat walls and aligned columns of a basilica define spatial volumes that are simple and mainly rectangular (except for the apse); they also are rationally interrelated and in proportion to each other, with a horizontal "pull" toward the bema, where the clergy would be seen framed by the outline of the apse.
Beyond the Empire, Byzantine plans were taken over with few changes or used as a point of departure for indigenous designs.In Russia the familiar "onion" dome was developed by the thirteenth century, perhaps in response to weather conditions (it sheds snow easily, preventing it from accumulating at the seam between the dome and the drum). Also in Russia, alongside churches of domed cubical shape, are "tent" churches, developed most energetically in the sixteenth century from native traditions of timber architecture. A tower with a huge steeple, its silhouette contrasting with the flat landscape, rises over the monocameral body of the church and is topped with a tiny lantern or dome: St. Basil the Blessed in Moscow's Red Square (actually not one church but a cluster of nine) has the best-known example.

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