Interesting
The Cathedral of Basil the Blessed, is a Russian Orthodox cathedral erected on the Red Square in Moscow in 1555–1561. The Monument to Minin and Pozharsky is made of bronze. Not particularly large, it consists of nine chapels, built on a single foundation. According to legend, however, it was built by an Italian architect who was blinded so that he could never create anything that was similar or equal. The St. Basil’s Cathedral, along with the Red Square were inscribed by Unesco as World Heritage Sites in 1990!
The Cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century to commemorate a military victory.Victory came on the feast day of the Intercession of the Virgin, so the Tsar chose to name his new church the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat, after the moat that ran beside the Kremlin.
St. Basil’s original construction involved a total of nine pillars or churches, replacing the former wooden churches, situated on a single foundation. A tenth pillar was added (1588) after the death of St. Basil and stands over his burial site.
Horsetail Fall, located in Yosemite National Park in California, is a seasonal waterfall that flows in the winter and early spring. The fall occurs on the East side of El Capitan.There are a few days every February where this fall is lit up by the setting sun and reflects a bright orange.
This waterfall descends in two streams side by side, the eastern one being the larger, but both quite small. The eastern one drops 470 m (1,500 ft) and the western one 480 m (1,600 ft), the highest fully-airborne waterfall in Yosemite that runs at some point every year. The waters then gather and descend another 150 m (490 ft) on steep slabs, so the total height of these waterfalls is 650 m (2,100 ft).
Kizhi island is about 7 km long and 0.5 km wide. It is surrounded by about 5,000 other islands, most of which are very small — some mere rock outcroppings (called "skerries"), though some are as big as 35 km long. Access to Kizhi is by hydrofoil across Lake Onega from Petrozavodsk (numerous trips every day in the summer)or by cruise ship, by helicopter and snowcat (in the winter). There is no lodging on Kizhi for overnight guests, except some guest houses in neighbouring villages.
The jewel of its architecture is the 22-domed Transfiguration Church (was founded in 1714), with a large iconostasis — a wooden screen covered with religious portraits, featuring much gold leaf. This iconostasis is in Petrozavodsk until restoration of the Transfiguration Church is completed (scheduled completion is 2014, the 300th anniversary of this monumental church). The massive Transfiguration Church (also known as the "summer church") is about 37m tall, making it one of the tallest log structures in the world. The smaller, ten-domed Intercession Church (also known as the "winter church") was built in 1764, and its iconostasis is intact and can be seen by visitors. The third structure inside the Pogost is the belltower which was built in 1874. The belltower is also constructed with walls of horizontally-fitted logs, though they are covered by exterior wooden planks and cannot be seen. The churches were also covered by planks in the 1860s. This wooden bordering was dismantled during restoration in the 1950s. All structures were made of scribe-fitted horizontal logs, with interlocking corner joinery — either round notch or dovetail—cut by axes. The pine trees used for wall construction were brought to Kizhi from the mainland nearby — a notable transport feat for the 18th century.
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