St. Catherine’s Cathedral is the main church of the Kuban and Yekaterinodar eparchy. The decision about its construction was taken on October 17, 1888 after the tsar’s train crashed at Borki station near Kharkov.
St. Catherine’s Cathedral is the largest cathedral in Krasnodar and one of the largest cathedrals in Russia. After the train crash in Yekaterinodar it was decided to build a church with seven altars. They wanted to consecrate the main altar in honour of St. Catherine of Alexandria, and the other six altars – in honour of the patron saints of the tsar’s family, Mary, Xenia, Olga, Nicholas, George and Michael.
It took over ten years to raise funds for the construction of the cathedral. It was laid down in the Catherine Square in 1900. The construction was commissioned to a gifted local architect Ivan Malgerb. At first the cathedral was quickly built. But then the revolution and the war resulted in the lack of money and the construction works were sometimes even stopped.
The cathedral was consecrated on March 24, 1914. It was fully built from red brick and was popularly called the «red» cathedral. It could seat up to four thousand people. In the 1930th they wanted to blow up the cathedral but its architect, Malgerb, managed to convince the commission in the inexpediency of its destruction. In the 1990th the cathedral was returned to the Church.
