[1] The cathedral was rebuilt between 1475 and 1479 at the behest of the grand prince Ivan III to a design by the Italian architect Aristotele Fioravanti.

[4] Following the disaster, Ivan III then invited Aristotele Fioravanti, a celebrated architect and engineer from Bologna, Italy, to come to Moscow and entrusted him with the task of designing the cathedral from scratch in the traditions of Russian architecture.

The ritual installation of metropolitans and patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church also took place in this cathedral, and their tombs are to be found here.

However, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, the new Bolshevik government closed all churches in the Moscow Kremlin, and converted the cathedral into a museum.

The final moment of this Paschal service was the subject of an unfinished painting by Pavel Korin entitled Farewell to Rus.

For the upper portion of the building, he used specially-made bricks, larger than the standard Russian size, which reduced weight and allowed for more slender arch supports.

In addition to its liturgical function, the iconostasis also served as a sort of trophy wall, in that Russian Tsars would add the most important icons from cities they had conquered to their collection.

One of the oldest, icons with the bust of Saint George dates from the 12th century and was transferred to Moscow by Tsar Ivan IV on the conquest of the city of Veliky Novgorod in 1561.

The plaza in front of the cathedral is the setting for the famous Coronation Scene in Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov.