This onion-domed, rainbow-hued, riverside behemoth in Saint Petersburg isn't quite as famous as its similar-looking cousin, St. Basil's Cathedral, in Moscow but the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood has a much more storied history.
It was built on the site where Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Construction began just a few years later, in 1883, and was funded almost entirely by the imperial family. Then, in the 1930s, the Bolsheviks shuttered it and reportedly used it as a storage facility for potatoes in World War II. The church reopened in 1997, after 27 years of restoration.
Thought to house the world's largest collection of mosaics within a church, the interior is covered from floor to ceiling with intricate tile work depicting biblical scenes. And while no regular services are held here, the site does lure pilgrims of the art variety from the world over who come to stare, slack-jawed, at the more than 75,000 square feet of mosaic marvels.
