St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Pokrovsky cathedral

St. Basils Cathedral in Moscow. Pokrovsky cathedral. Already by the 15th-16th centuries in Russia there is a markedly different from the Byzantine type of architecture of stone religious architecture. The first in a series of styles of national religious construction is "tent" style (or pillar). Its originality lies in the fact that in one temple as if several churches are connected, having the form of a tent and topped with a dome and a cupola. The peculiarity of the "tent" temple are also a variety of colors and decorative exterior and interior parts. The top of the stone tent architecture and one of the most expressive religious monuments in the world in its compositional complexity and colorful intricacy is St. Basils Cathedral or Pokrovsky Cathedral, built on red square in Moscow in the 16th century.
But the tents in the Russian architecture was destined to a short, albeit colorful life: in the mid 17th century the Church banned the construction tent churches, so different from his traditional festivity of the ship churches. Tent wooden and stone architecture of the 16th-17th centuries, nurtured by the traditions of Russian wooden architecture, is a unique style of Russian Church building, which has no analogues in the culture of other Nations.