Konstantin Thon - Russian-Byzantine Revival

Russian-Byzantine Revival

In 1830, Thon completed his most ambitious design to date, that of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. The Russian-Byzantine Revival style of his project, intended to underline similarity of the new church with old cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin, displeased many of his fellows, who wanted to see the cathedral built in the severe Neoclassical style. Nevertheless, the emperor personally approved his design. Thon and his disciples continued to work on the cathedral for the next 50 years, until the master's death in 1881.

In 1836–42, Thon supervised the construction of another ponderous church with a spacious interior, that of Presentation to the Temple for the Semenovsky regiment in St Petersburg. He followed this with dozens of Neo-Russian-Byzantine designs for churches and cathedrals in provincial towns, including Sveaborg, Yelets, Tomsk, Rostov-on-Don, and Krasnoyarsk. Some of his revivalist projects were assembled in the Model Album for Church Designs (1836).

From 1838 to 1851, Thon was employed in construction of the Neo-Russian Grand Kremlin Palace and the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. The grandiose palace, famed for opulent interiors of its 700 rooms and halls, was meant to symbolize the grandeur of the Russian state. It was a daring design which incorporated parts of earlier structures that had been standing on the spot. The palace has served successively as an official residence for the Russian tsars, Soviet rulers, and the Presidents of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Thon rehabilitated the abandoned Izmaylovo Estate into an almshouse for the veterans of the Napoleonic Wars.