The first building was commissioned in 1710 by Peter the Great himself. The building itself was little more than a wooden chapel. It was built in the vicinity of the Admiralty building. A lot of people did not like the building, perhaps believing the church to be below the rank that Peter the Great held as Tsar of Russia. However, Peter was a supporter of the building: he and Catherine I, his second wife, were married in the building in 1712. However, not too long following the wedding, in 1716, tragedy struck the quaint building. Whether by the design of detractors of the church or not, somehow the building burned down. Peter quickly demanded a second St. Isaac’s be built. Unfortunately, whether due to shoddy workmanship or just the swampy land that all of St. Petersburg is built upon, the building began to crumble. The order was quickly handed out to destroy the building.
For the next thirty to forty years, there was no St. Isaac’s Cathedral or Church to be found within St. Petersburg. However, in the 1760s, Catherine the Great, once again striving to measure up to her predecessor-Peter, built yet another cathedral. This cathedral could easily have been a monument representing all the accomplishments that Catherine had obtained. The building was on track to be comparable to most buildings in St. Petersburg. However, before she could see the completion of the newest derivation of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Catherine died. Following her death, the latest building went to seed. Whether because of poor planning on the architects part, or the fact that Paul I cut funding, the newest St. Isaac’s Cathedral was completed in brick. The building was originally supposed to be granite and marble, yet it ended up being a conglomeration of different materials that did not blend well by any stretch of the imagination. Eventually, the building was torn down and a new one begun.
The latest version, the one that stands to this day, was devised by Alexander I in 1809. He contrived a contest to find the best design for the cathedral. The winning blueprints belonged to Henri Louis Auguste Ricard de Montferrand. However, due to Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, the project was postponed until 1818. From then, it took forty years for the building to be completed.
When the building was completed, it dominated the senate square as well as creating a new square. It also became the main church in Russia until the Revolution. Part of the reason for this was the sheer grandness of the building. St. Isaac’s, even to this day, is the fourth largest domed building in the world. Another reason is that within Russia, until recently, St. Isaac’s was the largest cathedral in the country. It still remains the largest Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg. And for good reason as it would require much time and a lot more money to construct a church that could even try to match the grandeur of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.