Classroom lesson · Saint Basil's Cathedral · 🇷🇺 Russia

Saint Basil's Cathedral

Moscow's famous cathedral with rainbow onion domes

The colourful onion domes of Saint Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Saint Basil's Cathedral is a famous church in the middle of Moscow, Russia's capital city. It is covered in swirling, colourful domes that look like giant ice cream swirls or onions - no two domes are the same colour or pattern. It was built nearly 500 years ago and is one of the most recognised buildings in the whole world.

Tell me more

The cathedral stands on a wide open square called Red Square, right in the heart of Moscow. Its official name is the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, but almost everyone calls it Saint Basil's - named after a holy man called Basil who lived nearby. The building is made up of nine separate chapels, all joined together, each with its own differently shaped dome on top.

The brightly painted domes are the most famous thing about the cathedral. They are called onion domes because of their rounded, pointed shape - a little bit like a big onion sitting on top of a tower. The domes were not always so colourful; they were originally golden, and the bright painted patterns came later, making the cathedral look even more like something from a fairy tale.

Today Saint Basil's is a museum, so visitors can walk inside and explore all nine chapels. The inside walls are covered in beautiful painted patterns and religious pictures called icons. Red Square around it is often filled with people, and in winter a big outdoor ice rink is set up nearby - so you can skate with one of the world's most spectacular buildings right in front of you.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01If you could design your own building with unusual domes, what shapes and colours would you choose?
  2. 02Why do you think architects made each dome different instead of making them all the same?
  3. 03Saint Basil's is used as a museum today. What might visitors learn inside a building like this?
Try this

Classroom activity

Give each child a printed outline of a dome shape (or draw several dome outlines on one sheet). Using felt-tips or paint, design your own set of onion domes - try to make each one unique with different colours, stripes, and swirling patterns. Combine the class domes on a large sheet to build an imaginary cathedral together.