The Cathedral That Became a Swimming Pool

The explosion that brought down the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on December 5, 1931, was heard across Moscow. It took two blasts — the first misfired, leaving the massive dome listing — but by evening the great white neobyzantine structure, which had taken four decades to build, was a mountain of rubble. Joseph Stalin had ordered its erasure to clear ground for a Palace of the Soviets so colossal it would dwarf the Empire State Building, crowned with a 100-metre statue of Lenin. The palace was never built. For thirty years, the hollowed-out foundation became the world's largest open-air swimming pool. Today, a replica cathedral stands on the same spot, its golden domes once again dominating the riverside skyline.

The Tsar's Monument to Victory

The original cathedral was born from a vow. After Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812, Tsar Alexander I pledged to build a church thanking God for Russia's salvation. The project stalled for years, passing through the reigns of three emperors, before Nicholas I approved a design by Konstantin Thon. Construction began in 1839 on Sparrow Hills, but the ground proved unstable. The site was moved to the Moskva River embankment, near the Kremlin, and work resumed in 1860. The cathedral was finally consecrated in 1883, its vast interior clad in marble, its walls inscribed with the names of Russian generals and battles from the 1812 war. At 103 metres tall, it was the highest Orthodox church in the world, a monument not just to faith but to Romanov imperial power.

For nearly half a century it stood as the centrepiece of Moscow's spiritual landscape. Then came the Revolution. The Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, and by 1922 the cathedral's valuables — gold, silver, icons — were confiscated "for famine relief." The building remained open for worship, but its days were numbered. In 1931, the Soviet leadership decided the site was needed for a new monument: a congress hall and administrative centre that would serve as the architectural embodiment of the communist future.

The Palace That Never Was

The Palace of the Soviets was meant to be the tallest building on earth. The winning design, by Boris Iofan, envisioned a stepped tower 415 metres high, surmounted by a statue of Lenin taller than the Statue of Liberty. The Great Hall alone would seat 21,000 people. Construction began immediately after the cathedral's demolition. The foundations were dug, a massive steel frame began to rise, and the project became a showcase of Soviet ambition. Foreign architects and engineers were consulted; the American firm that built the Empire State Building was approached for technical advice.

But the ground, waterlogged by the nearby river, resisted. Steel deliveries slowed. The purges of the late 1930s decimated the project's leadership. When Germany invaded in 1941, the unfinished steel skeleton was dismantled for tank barriers and anti-tank hedgehogs. By war's end, the palace was abandoned. The great hole in the ground, lined with concrete, remained — a mute testament to a future that never arrived.

Moscow's Most Unlikely Pool

In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev, ever practical, ordered the foundation converted into a swimming pool. The Moskva Pool, as it was officially known, opened in 1960. It was a perfect circle, 130 metres in diameter, holding 30,000 cubic metres of water — heated, so it operated year-round. In winter, steam rose from its surface in the freezing air, creating a surreal microclimate where Muscovites swam outdoors while snow fell. The pool became a beloved institution. Generations learned to swim there. It hosted national championships. In the 1980s, a young Vladimir Putin reportedly swam its lanes.

The irony was inescapable. The site where Alexander I had vowed a cathedral to God became, under communism, a temple of secular leisure. The pool's heated water came from the city's power plants, a by-product of industrial might. No plaque explained what had stood there before. The cathedral survived only in photographs, in the memories of the old, and in the name of the nearby Metro station: Kropotkinskaya, opened in 1935, its vestibule adorned with bas-reliefs of the demolished church.

The Resurrection

The pool closed in 1994. By then, the Soviet Union was gone, and a movement to rebuild the cathedral had gathered momentum. The initiative came from ordinary Muscovites — veterans, artists, believers — who collected signatures and donations. The Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, championed the project. Boris Yeltsin laid the foundation stone in 1995. The reconstruction, led by architect Zurab Tsereteli, used modern materials — reinforced concrete faced with marble — but followed Thon's original plans. The work proceeded at breakneck speed. By 2000, the main altar was consecrated. The great bronze doors, the iconostasis, the frescoes — all recreated from surviving records and photographs.

The new cathedral is not the old one. Purists note the differences: the machine-cut stone lacks the hand-tooled warmth of the 19th-century original; the frescoes are brighter, the gold leaf newer. The underground chambers now house a museum, a conference hall, and a vast refectory. But from the riverbank, the silhouette is identical. The golden domes catch the same light. The inscription on the pediment — "God is with us" — reads the same.

On the feast of the Transfiguration in 2000, the cathedral's largest bell, weighing 30 tonnes, rang for the first time. Its peal carried across the Moskva River, past the Kremlin walls, over the city that had watched the cathedral die, become a pool, and rise again. The swimmers were gone. The water was gone. The stone remained, reshaped once more by the tides of Russian history.

This is one episode in a much longer story. For the full account of the destruction and reconstruction of Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral, read “Visiting Moscow” by Denise Nichols on MixCache.com.