Onion dome

There are similar buildings in other Eastern European countries, and occasionally in Western Europe: Bavaria (Germany), Austria, and northeastern Italy.

[2][3] An early prototype of onion dome also appeared in Chehel Dokhter, a mid-11th century Seljuk architecture in Damghan region of Iran.

[5] But still several theories exist that the Russian onion shape was influenced by countries from the Orient, like India and Persia, with whom Russia has had lengthy cultural exchange.

Byzantine churches and architecture of Kievan Rus were characterized by broader, flatter domes without a special framework erected above the drum.

In contrast to this ancient form, each drum of a Russian church is surmounted by a special structure of metal or timber, which is lined with sheet iron or tiles, while the onion architecture is mostly very curved.

[citation needed] Some scholars postulate that the Russians adopted onion domes from Muslim countries, possibly from the Khanate of Kazan, whose conquest in 1552 Ivan the Terrible commemorated by erecting St.

Nikolay Voronin, who studied pre-Mongol Russian architecture, seconded his opinion that onion domes existed in Russia as early as the thirteenth century.

[9] Modern art historian Sergey Zagraevsky surveyed hundreds of Russian icons and miniatures, from the eleventh century onward.

[11] At that time, porches, pilasters, vaults and drums were arranged to create a vertical thrust, to make the church seem taller than it was.

Such ponderous crosses would have been easily toppled, if they had not been fixed to sizeable stones traditionally placed inside the elongated domes of Russian churches.

In 1917, religious philosopher Prince Evgenii Troubetzkoy argued that the onion shape of Russian church domes may not be explained rationally.

According to Trubetskoy, drums crowned by tapering domes were deliberately scored to resemble candles, thus manifesting a certain aesthetic and religious attitude.

The onion shape results from the idea of prayer as a soul burning towards heaven, which connects the earthly world with the treasures of the afterlife.

Usually made of copper sheet, onion domes appear on Catholic churches all over southern Germany, Switzerland, Czech lands, Austria, and Sardinia and Northeast Italy.

[citation needed] The World's Only Corn Palace, a tourist attraction and basketball arena in Mitchell, South Dakota, also features onion domes on the roof of the structure.