UA-1182066

Victoria sent me not one but two cards. She said Ukraine has many beautiful churches and she wanted to show me St. Vladimir Cathedral in Sevastopol and another one that I'll show later. 

UA-1182066, sent by Victoria.

St. Vladimir's Cathedral is an Orthodox church in Sevastopol, Ukraine which was built in the aftermath of the Crimean War as a memorial to the heroes of the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855).

It was the admiral Mikhail Lazarev who came up with the idea to build St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Sevastopol rather than in Chersonesus as was originally intended. The church contains the tombs of Lazarev and three of his disciples – Vladimir Kornilov, Vladimir Istomin and Pavel Nakhimov – who died during the siege.

The architecture of the church is Neo-Byzantine. The original design was submitted by Konstantin Thon for the Chersonesus Cathedral. It was reworked by a local architect, Aleksey Avdeyev. The lower church was consecrated in 1881, the upper church was finished 7 years later.

The building rises to a height of 32.5 meters. The marble-clad interior was decorated by a team of Swiss and Italian artists. The names of the heroes of the 1850s siege are inscribed on the walls. The tombs of the admirals were destroyed by the Soviets in 1931. The church sustained further damage in the Second World War. - in: wikipedia