Peter and Paul Cathedral and Cathedral Square

Cathedral Square was named after the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul standing at its center. An imperial burial vault lies beneath the golden spire: after Pyotr I, nearly all the rulers of the dynasty were buried here. Light marble slabs mark the burials beneath the floor, while the first coffin stood in the unfinished stone cathedral for several years. Only later were the emperor’s remains committed to the earth.

In the autumn of eighteen thirty, a man appeared on the spire. Pyotr Telushkin, a state peasant from Yaroslavl Governorate and a roofer, earned his living repairing roofs, domes, and bell towers. He climbed to repair the cross and the copper angel at a height of one hundred twenty-two and a half meters.

A strong wind had damaged the cladding of the cross and the angel’s wing. To carry out the repair, scaffolding was to be built almost to the full height of the bell tower; the scaffolding alone would have cost several thousand rubles. Telushkin submitted a written petition: the treasury would pay for the materials, he would not build scaffolding, and his payment would be set after the work. The poor craftsman had no cash deposit. His life was the security.

The inner staircase reached only as far as the hatch in the spire. Telushkin secured a rope inside, tied the other end around himself, and climbed outside. Holding the bent edges of the copper sheets with his fingers and bracing his toe against the seams, he moved around the sloping surface until he had encircled the spire with a loop. Then he passed the rope over the crossbar of the cross and made a suspended ladder. Using it, he raised tools and materials for several weeks, secured the metal cladding, and soldered a wing onto the angel.

After the work was accepted, Telushkin received five thousand rubles in paper assignations and a silver For Diligence Medal on a St Anne Ribbon. The artist Georgy Chernetsov painted his portrait. The roofer gained renown and new commissions, but he did not live long: three years later he died, having barely reached the age of thirty. The story of free drink allegedly granted to him by the emperor appeared later and remains an urban legend.

Telushkin worked on the fortress’s main church. The square was named Cathedral Square after the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul standing at its center. Peter was Christ’s closest disciple and the heavenly patron of the city’s founder, Pyotr I. Paul had once persecuted Christians, then became a preacher himself. The church was founded in seventeen oh three, on the day of their shared commemoration.

By then, the burial vault of the House of Romanov was already beneath the spire. Members of the imperial family began to be buried here under Pyotr I. After his death, his coffin was brought into the unfinished stone cathedral and placed in a temporary wooden chapel. The emperor was not committed to the earth until six years later, by order of his niece Anna Ioannovna. After that, nearly all Russian emperors and empresses were buried here. Now white marble gravestones stand above crypts hidden beneath the floor.

The angel repaired by Telushkin has not survived to the present day. In eighteen fifty-eight, builders replaced the wooden structures of the spire with metal ones and installed a new figure. A different angel now stands above Cathedral Square; Telushkin’s route from the hatch to the cross survives only in a description from his lifetime and in drawings.