St. Basil's Cathedral in the context of "Siege of Kazan"

Cathedrals, collegiate churches, and monastic churches like those of abbeys and priories, often have certain complex structural forms that are found less often in parish churches. They also tend to display a higher level of contemporary architectural style and the work of accomplished craftsmen, and occupy a status both ecclesiastical and social that an ordinary parish church rarely has. Such churches are generally among the finest buildings locally and a source of regional pride. Many are among the world's most renowned works of architecture. These include St Peter's Basilica, Notre-Dame de Paris, Cologne Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Antwerp Cathedral, Prague Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of San Vitale, St Mark's Basilica, Westminster Abbey, Saint Basil's Cathedral, Antoni Gaudí's incomplete Sagrada Família and the ancient cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, now a mosque.

The earliest large churches date from Late Antiquity. As Christianity and the construction of churches spread across the world, their manner of building was dependent upon local materials and local techniques. Different styles of architecture developed and their fashion spread, carried by the establishment of monastic orders, by the posting of bishops from one region to another and by the travelling of master stonemasons who served as architects. The successive styles of the great church buildings of Europe are known as Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, and various Revival styles of the late 18th to early 20th centuries, and then Modern. Underlying each of the academic styles are the regional characteristics. Some of these characteristics are so typical of a particular country or region that they appear, regardless of style, in the architecture of churches designed many centuries apart.

Russian churches often have various recurrent elements in their architecture. The onion dome is for example a recurrent and important element in the architecture of Russian churches. Often Russian churches have also multi-colored filigree ornamental elements. Furthermore the colour white plays an important role in the style of Russian churches. In the past, Russian churches were made out of wood. Many Russian Orthodox churches are distinguished by their verticality, bright colors and multiple domes, which provide a striking contrast with the flat Russian landscape, often covered in snow. The first churches in Kievan Rus', such as the 13-domed wooden Cathedral of St. Sophia, Novgorod, differed in this regard from their mainly single-dome Byzantine predecessors. The number of domes was important symbolically. One dome symbolized the single God; three represented the Trinity, and five represented Christ and his four evangelists. At first the baptistery, narthex, and choir gallery above the narthex were a common feature of Rus' churches, but gradually they disappeared. After a century of Byzantine imitations, the Russian masons began to emphasise the verticality in church design.

The late 12th century saw the development of so-called tower churches in Polotsk and Smolensk; this design later spread to other areas such as Kiev and Chernihiv. A visual transition between the main cube of the church and the elongated cylinder below the dome was provided by one or several rows of curved corbel arches, known as kokoshniki. They could be spade-shaped, semicircular, or pointed. In later Muscovite churches, the massed banks of kokoshniki evolved into a distinctive pyramidal shape. The reign of Ivan the Terrible was marked by the introduction of so-called tented roofs. The churches such as St. Basil's Cathedral were an agglomeration of chapels capped by the steeply pitched conical roofs of fanciful designs.