Our teacher told us that we should visit this cathedral in St. Petersburg. We went on a tour and were able to see some beautiful artwork. St. Isaac's cathedral has a long and interesting history. It was built between the years of 1818 and 1858 and is quite impressive. The dome is gilded with pure gold and the main structure is almost entirely built out of granite and marble.
The columns shown on the pictures below are made out of single pieces of red granite. There was a model, which you can see below, that showed how the Russians raised each and every column. If you look closely, you can see that one of the columns shows damage from WWII. They actually painted the gold dome grey during the war to avoid attracting attention from the enemy aircraft!
The interior of the cathedral is covered with various artwork. Even the cathedral's doors are covered in relief sculptures and are very detailed. 
The iconostasis is quite majestic and is framed by eight columns of semiprecious stone. Our teacher is also a master in icon painting and she really wanted us to see this masterpiece. Most of the paintings in the cathedral were completed by Russian artists, however, when some of them started to deteriorate due to the cold conditions, the architect had some of them reproduced as mosaics. We were amazed at the amount of detail that the artists were able to achieve with tiny stones!!
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