Outside the Church of Our Saviour on the Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg is an interesting city. The Venice of the North, or Petrograd or Leningrad or Piter depending on who was/is referring to it, is the second largest city of Russia, the largest by cool factor, the poshest by style factor, and the northernmost in the world for cities having over 1 million people. It is also the erstwhile capital of the Russian Empire.
This beautiful structure, outside which I am standing just for being photographed standing outside, was built on the very spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Alexander II was actually a noble king, who ultimately paid a price for being good.
He was the one who abolished the serf (enslavement of Russian farmers, just like you still see in modern-day Bihar) system, among other reforms that he initiated. He was finally assassinated by revolutionaries, who actually got an opportunity to even think only because he had allowed them to. And Just like Jesus, who paid with his life for the good of man, this king too paid similarly. But then, the Emperor at least got a cool church made in his honour.
As an irony, despite the church’s very Russian style, its principle architect, was not even Russian.
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