At Tsarskoye Selo, outside Saint Petersburg, the Feodorovsky Sovereign's Cathedral was built in the early 20th century as the church of the imperial family, and it belongs to a moment when Russia was looking hard at its own past. Rejecting the neoclassicism that dominated the capital, its architects returned to the forms of the medieval north: white walls with minimal openings, a single powerful dome, carved portals, a low crypt-like lower church. The result is deliberately archaic, an image of old Russia constructed on the eve of the empire's collapse. That timing gives the building its particular resonance. Filmed in 4K, the programme examines the exterior and the painted interior, the lower church, and the surrounding grounds, and situates the cathedral in the neo-Russian revival and the final years of the imperial court.
