Sunday, August 29, 2010

Moscow, Russia

I think that this is one of the most famous and most favourited Russian postcards....and with a reason!

It simply looks more like coming from a fairy tale book than something real...thumbs up to N.H.Rahmanova who is signed as the photographer of this.
The card shows the St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, (also known as Cathedral of Intercession of Theotokos on the Moat) which is the city's main cathedral. It is a Russian Orthodox cathedral erected on the Red Square in Moscow in 1555–1561. Built on the order of Ivan IV of Russia to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric center of the city and the hub of its growth since the 14th century.It was the tallest building of Moscow until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.
The building's design, shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, has no analogues in Russian architecture: "It is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to 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 but has never been reproduced directly.
The cathedral has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929 and, as of 2009, remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The cathedral has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990

Russia is one of my top countries when it comes to stamps....they simply have fantastic issues!
The big yellow one in the middle one is from a set of 4 issued in 2004 representing an amber room and this one shows an engraved head....why this stamp is special to me is coz the head is really engraved and if you put your fingers over it you can actually feel the shape...something like when you read the Braille's alphabet...the stamp on the very left is also from 2004 from a set of 4, issued under the name "We glorify the Homeland" - this stamp in particular shows Marshal Zhukov. The stamp on the right is from a set of 5 issued in 2005, representing History of Russian State - Emperor Alexander II. The bottom stamp is a well known definitive from 2008, issued in a set of 15, representing a fox.

3 comments:

Anastasia said...

no, it's not a main cathedral of Moscow, it's just a museum:) Moscow's (and Russia's) main active cathedral is cathedral of Christ the Saviour, also well known through postcards:)

yeah, the irony is the most famous Russian cathedral doesn't look like other russian churches:)

conscioushours said...

Oh I just love this one :)

Ana said...

Anastasia, I relied on what the sender wrote to me on the back of the card :)

Post a Comment