Dormition Cathedral in Smolensk

According to the official legend, the remaining defenders of the city locked themselves in the cathedral and then set fire to the gunpowder in the ammunition depot in the church's basement on June 3, 1611.

After Smolensk was recaptured by the tsars and recognized as belonging to Russia in the 1667 peace treaty, the Russian voivode Prince Repnin was commissioned to inspect the cathedral and to prepare a list of urgent repairs.

The current six-pillared, five-domed edifice was constructed over a period of almost 100 years due to flaws in the original design and its implementation – at one point one of the walls collapsed – but it was eventually completed in 1772.

According to local legend, when Napoleon Bonaparte entered the cathedral after Smolensk had fallen to the French army in 1812, he looked up at the altar wall and proclaimed that if any one of his soldiers dared to steal anything from it, he would personally kill that man.

The cathedral sustained enormous damage during World War II, when the 11th-century miraculous icon of Theotokos of Smolensk perished in a great fire.