The church of St. Catherine of Alexandria was not the first Catholic church opened in the capital of the Russian Empire, but its location and history from its consecration in 1783 made it the mother church for all Russian Catholics. Peter I wanted all Christians living in St. Petersburg to have their churches, and this was instrumental for the appearance of a Catholic church in the capital. In 1710 the Tzar became the godfather of the first child baptised in the parish later named after St. Catherine of Alexandria. The year 1716 may be considered the official date of the foundation of the parish. In September 1738 the Empress Anna Ioannovna granted a site in Nevsky Prospekt for the construction of a Catholic church by signing a decree. The initial project for the future church was designed by the Italian Domenico Trezzini, but his departure for his homeland in 1751 suspended construction works for long, and only in 1762 another architect, Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe, created a new project and took charge of the works. But he, too, was forced to leave for France before finishing the construction. The Empress Catherine II entrusted the work to the architect Antonio Rinaldi, the head (syndic) of the Catholic community. Having made some amendments to Vallin de la Mothe's project, Rinaldi continued the construction which was finished in 1782 under the supervision of the architect Giuseppe Minciacchi. On October 7, 1783, after 20 years of construction, the church named after St. Catherine of Alexandria, maiden and martyr, Empress Catherine II's celestial patron, was consecrated. The stately, crowned with a mighty dome, church building forms a Latin cross in plan. The building is 44 metres long, 25 metres wide, and 42 metres tall. The church holds about two thousand people. The main facade of the building is designed as a monumental arched doorway resting upon detached columns. The facade is crowned with a high balustrade, upon which the figures of the four Evangelists and figures of angels holding a cross stand. Above the main doorway the words from the Gospel of Matthew are inscribed (in Latin): ''My house shall be called the house of prayer'' (Mt 21:13), and below is written the date of the completion of construction (in Latin): ''Anno Domini MDCCLXXXII''. Above the main altar hangs a large painting ''The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine'' by Jacob Mittenleider, a famous painter of that time, presented to the church by the Empress Catherine II. The Church of St. Catherine is closely connected with many events of historical and cultural life of St. Petersburg, Russia, and Europe.
In February 1798, by the highest decree of the Emperor Paul I, the last Polish King Stanis?aw August Poniatowski was solemnly buried here (J?zef Koz?owski's Requiem, composed specially for this Mass, was performed then for the first time). Memorial stone with inscription in Latin persisted up to 1984, but the remains were in 1938 transferred to Poniatowski family vault in their estate in Wo?czyn, at the request of the Polish government. Here was buried the French general Jean Victor Moreau (1763-1813), one of the brilliant commanders of the French Republic, who took charge of the anti-Napoleonic allied army after the death of the Field Marshal M.I. Kutuzov. L.P. Wittgenstein and Stefania Radziwi?? were married here in 1828. A.S. Pushkin, A.S. Griboyedov, I.I. Kozlov, P.A. Vyazemsky, V.A. Zhukovsky, the brothers Bryullov, A.O. Smirnova-Rosset attended the wedding. In January 1837, Georges d'Anth?s and E.N. Goncharova were married in the church. In 1829, Henri Louis Auguste Ricard de Montferrand, the outstanding architect of the late Classicism, was married in the Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Here he had his son baptised, and here the last rites were read above the child after his death at the age of 5 (he caught cholera during the 1830 epidemic). In 1816, at the age of 30, Montferrand was invited from Paris to St. Petersburg, where in the course of forty years of life and work he became famous due to the construction of such renowned buildings as St. Isaac's Cathedral and Alexander's Column. Montferrand's being a Catholic was a pretext for the Emperor Alexander II to refuse him in his desire to be buried in a tomb under St. Isaac's Cathedral. On June 28, 1858 the coffin with the architect's body was only carried round the cathedral, and then was placed in the Church of St. Catherine. Here the Requiem Mass was said. Later Elise Debonniere, Montferrand's widow, took his body to Paris and buried him in the Monmartre Cemetery on September 28, 1858.
Bishop ordinations were performed in the Church of St. Catherine, and here members of noble families were married. The solemn liturgies were attended by the royal court. Many Russian aristocrats who converted to Catholicism were its parishioners: Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, Princess Alexandra Golitsyna, Prince Ivan Gagarin, Petr Chaadaev, the future Decembrist Mikhail Lunin, and others. The Church's especial glory and pride were its splendid choir, Italian soloists, and the magnificent organ, one of the best in Europe. Excellent acoustics made the sounds of music truly divine. Holy music of the famous composers Francesco Manfredini, Giuseppe Sarti, Domenico Cimarosa, Giovanni Paisiello was performed here (often conducted by the authors themselves), and in 1909-1910 the Lithuanian painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas ?iurlionis played on the organ during his stay in St. Petersburg.
The ministers of St. Catherine's parish made an invaluable contribution to education in St. Petersburg. Already in 1769, during the church's construction, a school was opened for ten classes, in which 100 to 200 children were being taught. In the reign of Paul I the so-called ''collegium'', a boarding school for children of noble families, was opened under the auspices of the Church of St. Catherine. Here the children of many noble families, including the Baryatinsky, Volkonsky and Vyazemsky families, received their education. In 1839, a gymnasium for girls was opened at the parish. In 1875, the gymnasium and the boarding school were moved to a specially built four-storeyed wing in the church courtyard. In 1889, a free primary school for girls was opened at the parish, and in 1896, Antonio Malecki, priest of the Church of St. Catherine, opened an orphanage for homeless children in Kirillovskaya Street.
The Russian rulers had entrusted the church to different orders: Catherine II - to the Franciscans, Paul I - to the Jesuits (1800-1815), and Alexander I, after the banishment of the Jesuits, to the Dominicans (1816-1892). From 1892, the church was administered by diocesan priests, but the Dominican community still existed. From 1855 to 1857, Zygmunt Szcz?sny Feli?ski, the future Archbishop of Warsaw, was the vicar of the Church of St. Catherine. From 1907 to 1914, St. Urszula Led?chowska was in charge of the boarding school and gymnasium for girls. Just before the 1917 Revolution the parish numbered more than thirty thousand of the faithful.
In 1918, after the Bolshevik takeover, the houses owned by the church in Nevsky Prospekt and Italyanskaya Street were confiscated. The lessons in the gymnasiums stopped. In March 1923, Archbishop Jan Cieplak, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia, Constantine Budkiewicz, St. Catherine's parish priest, Jan Wasilewski and Pawe? Chodniewicz, the Church's chaplains, and 11 more Catholic priests were arrested. They were accused of resistance against the confiscation of church valuables from churches and counter-revolutionary propaganda weakening the dictatorship of the proletariat. Archbishop Jan Cieplak's death sentence was replaced with 10 years of imprisonment, and later he was banished from the country. Constantine Budkiewicz, the parish priest, was shot in the back of his head on Easter Night of March 31/April 1, 1923, in the basement of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission in the Lubyanka. After the ''priests' trial'' the Church of St. Catherine remained opened, but now it was administered by the French priests Jean Amoudru and Michel Floran (died in May 1995 in France). After the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic dt. September 7, 1938, the church was closed down and ransacked. The broken icons and holy vessels were thrown out. The magnificent library was no more. One of the parishioners, the 19-year-old Zofia Step??kowska, rescued the great altar cross. On May 15, 1940, it was placed in the only church opened then - Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Kovensky Lane (now the cross is returned to the Church of St. Catherine).
After the liquidation of the parish the church building was used as a warehouse. In 1947, the first fire broke out, and the wooden decor, the frescoes, and some statues were damaged. But the organ suffered the most. In the following years, the church facilities were used by different organisations as warehouses.
In the end of the 1970s, by the decision of the Executive Committee of Leningrad City Council of People's Deputies, the church building was given to Leningrad Philarmony for the organisation of an organ hall there. The architects-restorers picked up the pieces of the interiors to restore the church's original appearance. Under the guidance of the experienced architect A.I. Taranenko the building was measured, and estimates for the necessary works were made, and in 1977 the timber scaffolding was installed. The repair began, but was progressing very slowly. The second fire of February 14, 1984, destroyed the remains of the decor, the marble statues, and brought the work of the restorers to nothing. Even marble could not resist the fire. King Stanis?aw August Poniatowski's memorial stone was damaged. After the fire the windows of the burnt building were nailed up with planks and metal sheets; a new restoration plan was made up, but in 1989 the restoration was suspended, and the church abandoned. In the first floor of the parish premises the offices of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism were arranged, and private flats were made above.
