St. Petersburg, Russia
Coordinates: 59.955170, 30.323890
The Saint Petersburg Mosque, when opened in 1913, was the largest mosque in Europe outside Turkey, its minarets 49 meters in height and the dome is 39 meters high.
The mosque is situated in downtown St Petersburg. It can accommodate up to five thousand worshippers.
The founding stone was laid in 1910 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the reign of Abdul Ahat Khan in Bukhara.
By that time, the Muslim community of the Russian then-capital exceeded 8,000 people.
The architect Nikolai Vasilyev patterned the mosque after Gur-e-Amir, the tomb of Tamerlane in Samarkand. Its construction was completed by 1921.
Worshippers are separated by gender during a worship service; females worship on the first floor, while the males worship on the ground floor.
The location of the mosque was symbolic, sited opposite the Peter and Paul Fortress, in the city centre. The permission to purchase the site was given by Emperor Nicholas II in Peterhof on 3 July 1907.
Skilled craftsmen from Central Asia took part working on the mosque.
The facades are decorated with verses from Koran using the characteristic Arabian calligraphy. Internal columns are made from green marble.
The mosque was covered by huge special made carpets woven by the Central Asian craftsmen.
In 1940, Soviet authorities banned services and turned the building into a medical equipment storehouse. At the request of the first Indonesian President, Sukarno, ten days after his visit to the city, the mosque was returned to the Muslim religious community of St. Petersburg in 1956. A major restoration of the mosque was carried out in 1980.
This is Saint Petersburg’s main mosque. The opulent, azure structure marks the city’s status as a multi-ethnic and multi-racial city.
Before the opening of the Makhachkala Juma mosque it was the largest in the Russian Federation.
Know This
Reach it using Gorkovskaya metro station.
If you are not muslim, limit your visit to the outside
