As you wish, but I was personally offended that some express doubts that our Russian ancestors could build St. Petersburg without having studied the history of the city's construction themselves. I do not deny the possibility that the city itself stands on a more ancient foundation that could have existed on this site, and even more so on Vasilievsky Island. If a city has already been found on the Kola Peninsula with dimensions of 450-500 wide and 700-800 meters long. And the base of the city is lined with slabs 40 steps wide and 60-70 meters long, with a stone thickness of about 45-50 cm. Moreover, a similar thing could be found both on Vasilievsky Island and on the opposite banks. But is it right to think that St. Petersburg itself was built with the help of a crowbar and a shovel. And so a little history of the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Here I will apply the excerpts of my opponents,may they forgive me, but they were the first to start doubting the ability of the Russian people to build a city. And with that, let's roll up our sleeves and start raking the trash of hysterics from history. But let's start with an article by normal researchers:
Olga Zavyalova
“The project was made by the famous German architect Georg Mattarnovi in St. Petersburg, who also took part in the construction of the grotto in the Summer Garden and the Winter Palace. In 1717, Peter I personally laid the foundation stone for the future church. But the construction was not easy: in 1719 Mattarnovi died, and the leading architect of St. Petersburg Nikolai Gerbel was entrusted with finishing the building. The eminent master did not quite cope with the task - the designs of the vaults designed by him turned out to be unsuccessful and cracked. In 1724 Gerbel died, the construction of the church was completed by two equally famous architects: Gaetano Chiaveri and Mikhail Zemtsov. 1818 - the project was approved;
The only thing that continues to amaze me is the way in which a stone of the same size is cut as indicated in the engraving. Since, unlike the reader, I have already looked through all the engravings and noted for myself all the details of the construction. I remember that in Peter's times the height of 160 cm was above average, and they were taken into the guards at 170 cm in height. Now they are taken to the guard of honor at 185 cm in height. So on the engraving we see a workpiece with a height of 4 heights, which is equal to 150 * 4 = 600 cm, and a length of 150 * 13 = 1950 cm, that is, almost 20 meters. And we can judge that the engraving was made at a later stage during the preparation of the upper columns of the cathedral, since the lower ones exceeded 60 meters in height. Apparently, having cut through the side and rear adits, horizontal ones were also needed from below, and for this it was necessary to cut them out at least half the height of a person,then the engraving of the movement of the workpiece of the lower column 3 meters high becomes clear.
Below we see the same quarry, and apparently the same artist, judging by the two figures in the center, but with two ready-made column blanks. The lower engraving differs in the depth of the adit, judging by the shadow on the left and the absence of the shadow on the right.
Promotional video:
And this is how the blanks were cut for the lower columns of the cathedral, where we see the blank width of more than 3 meters. The height of the visible part of the logs is 6 human heights 150 * 6 = 900 cm, I will explain to the reader that this is the height of modern wooden supports for electrical lines.
And this is how opponents say:
“Official sources do not mention lifting machines during the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. The weight of the columns of the upper colonnade is 64 tons, and the height of the colonnade is 41 meters. For comparison, I will say that this is the height of the 14th floor. If one can somehow agree with the version of the manual installation of the lower colonnade made of columns weighing 114-117 tons (purely theoretically), then all attempts to explain the manual (without machine) assembly of the upper colonnade do not stand up to criticism."
“But further transportation is also worth a separate word. The finished columns were delivered by ships, unloaded manually with crowbars and ropes, and then they were reloaded onto a specially built railroad and brought directly to the point of installation. Only historians forget about the mass - each column weighs 64 tons! Just for manual unloading."
I draw your attention to how "the first pancake is lumpy" and a failure occurred during loading, something went wrong and the blank for the column, when loading on a barge, broke through the flooring and tilted the barge, which was tied to the berths on both sides, against overturning … The artist captured people's panic when something went wrong. Apparently this was not the first "pancake", as now they found one of the columns from the air at the bottom, crushing the wreckage of the barge. With all our modern technology, we now shrug our shoulders and do not know how to lift the column and deliver it to St. Petersburg. Of course, our ancestors, who transported the column and drowned it, could not lift it back onto the barges and deliver it to the city. All this proves the transportation of columns for the construction of the cathedral from the quarries to the city. And not thatthat the cathedral was supposedly already standing initially and Peter only needed to complete the construction.
And in this engraving we see by no means manual work with the help of "some mother", but quite civilized, as indicated by the detail of thoughtfulness for reusable use: when the cables are not wound around the gate, but rewound and rolled into a bay. Let's look at the highlighted in red square. and we also see that the ends of the cables are intended for transporting blanks of columns. And they were unloaded not to the construction site of the cathedral, but to special workshops for precise surface treatment and complete finishing. In the next engraving, you can draw attention to the support bowls for the columns, in front of the workshop, which were waiting for the exact fit of the column and the support washer. The "bricks" stacked on the construction site did not escape your attention either. From my own experience I can suggest that the weight of each “brick” should be between 3 - 3.5 tons. We are pampered by mechanical and crane technology, now we would think about how to drag such pebbles onto the walls of the cathedral. Here I counted 44 bricks, which is 132 tons of total weight. What can be assumed by looking at the engraving. The column is laid horizontally, apparently on rollers, which means that people were able to rotate the column during processing. Then it only remains to forge the cutters and, like on a lathe, move the cutter or emery abrasive along the column, giving it the desired shape. Then it only remains to forge the cutters and, like on a lathe, move the cutter or emery abrasive along the column, giving it the desired shape. Then it only remains to forge the cutters and, like on a lathe, move the cutter or emery abrasive along the column, giving it the desired shape.
And here is such a situation, to look at which a huge number of onlookers gathered.
1828 - the beginning of the installation of the first columns.
Construction work resumed in 1826. 48 columns were installed for more than two years: from March 20, 1828 to August 11, 1830. Moreover, most of the time was spent preparing the mountings, and the installation of the columns themselves did not exceed 40–45 minutes.
The installation of 24 monolithic granite columns around the perimeter of the dome drum turned out to be even more difficult. Each column weighs 64 tons. It took about two hours to install one. The first column took its place on November 5, 1837, within two months the remaining 23 were raised.
1837 - installation of the upper columns;
Let's turn to the opinion of the apponents.
PETER'S SECRETS: WHO AND WHEN BUILT ISAAC'S CATHEDRAL?
View of St. Isaac's Square from the Senate. Unknown author. Painted lithograph. 1820s
In this engraving, the author of the article stumbled as if it were a contradiction: after all, according to historical reports, the cathedral was completed much later than 1820. So how, then, could a finished cathedral end up in a 1920 engraving? But he didn’t notice that the cathedral was not completed … but what indicates this? The absence of colonnades to the right and left of the main building of the cathedral. And it will take another 20 years to establish them. And it is in this form that we can see the cathedral on the pediment.
We see that the side columns differ from the pediment columns in the number of rows and the width of the roofs.
“General view of St. Petersburg and its surroundings from a bird's eye view. Engraver A. Apert after drawing by I. Charlemagne. 1840th. Fragment.
In all the engravings we can see already built buildings with columns, maybe the essence is smaller, but this is still a real experience in creating these construction details. But the well-established machine tools for processing columns could not be left idle and we turn to the most mysterious detail of St. Petersburg.
Montferrand noted: “The mining of granites, work of this kind in all other places is not very ordinary, is met in Russia very often and is very well understood … surprised. In short, it was a common thing for a Russian to cut down a 114-ton convoy and deliver it from Vyborg to St. Petersburg: D
But a mystery to me remains the way of cutting blank columns from a monolithic mountain …
But here, too, I find the answer: Karelian syenite is a very dense, beautiful monolithic stone, very similar to granite, but differs from granite in the ease of processing by wire cutting. And you can see this answer on YouTube:
Author: Pavel Shasherin