A cityscape of St. Petersburg with view of St. Isaac's Cathedral, soldiers marching, figure groups including a boy with a dog, and horse-drawn carriages in the foreground; sunset background

Tsar Alexander I commissioned the architect, Auguste de Montferrand, to design St. Isaac's Cathedral in 1818. The completion of the dramatic Neoclassical dome and decorated interior, resplendent with granite columns, spanned forty years and finally reached completion in 1858. St. Isaac's faces the Mariinsky Palace and is flanked to the east by another of Montferrand's Empire buildings, the Lobanov-Rostovsky House, whose eight-column portico can be seen at the right of the present miniature. St. Isaac's served as the main cathedral of St. Petersburg until the October Revolution of 1917.