The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was commissioned by Emperor Alexander III in 1883 to mark the spot where his father, Alexander II, was fatally wounded in an 1881 assassination — hence its name. Built in an ornate medieval Russian style rather than the Baroque and neoclassical styles common in St. Petersburg, it was completed in 1907.
Inside, the church holds more than 7,000 square meters of mosaics, the largest mosaic collection in the world, created by artists including Viktor Vasnetsov and Mikhail Vrubel and linking Alexander II’s death to the crucifixion.
Closed by Soviet authorities in 1932 and used as a wartime morgue and later a potato storehouse, the church reopened as a museum in 1997 after extensive restoration and remains one of St. Petersburg’s most photographed landmarks.