The St. Petersburg Catholic community, which included Italians, French, and Poles, received this plot by decree of Anna Ioannovna in 1738 and initially built a temporary wooden prayer house on it.

In 1739, architect Pietro Antonio Trezzini made a design for a church in the style of mature Baroque, located deep within the plot, with two symmetrical houses (No. 32 and No. 34) facing the red line of the avenue. This project was not realized, but the technique of connecting identical three-story houses to the church with tall arches was implemented later. A new project for the main Catholic church of St. Petersburg was developed in 1761-1762 by Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe. His intended composition resembled a triumphal arch with sculptural groups on top and two single-tier bell towers, and was executed in the spirit of Baroque. Construction, started in the mid-1760s, was interrupted, but resumed in 1779 by the architect and simultaneously the church’s syndic Antonio Rinaldi, who simplified Vallin de la Mothe’s design. He abandoned the towers and complex sculptural groups, making the facade design more austere. After Rinaldi’s departure, construction was completed by Iosif Minchaki.

The building is set back deep within the plot, as Trezzini had proposed. The plan of the cathedral is a Latin cross, with a large dome on a massive drum rising above the crossing. In the center of the main facade is a gigantic arched niche with two columns. This motif evokes associations with Italian Renaissance buildings. The clarity and unity of the order with the wall, the treatment of the surface with large flat recesses are typical of early St. Petersburg Classicism. Baroque is recalled by the curved outlines of the windows and frames, and the dynamic statues of the evangelists on the parapet. The exquisite facade decoration includes the so-called “Rinaldi flower” — a distinctive signature of the architect.

Pilasters and three-quarter composite order columns organize the interior space. The paintings were executed by Giuseppe Valeriani, and the relief compositions by sculptor Concezio Albani. On October 7, 1783, the church, which received cathedral status, was consecrated in honor of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the patroness of Catherine II.

The church hall with its organ was famous for its acoustics. The cathedral was visited at various times by Adam Mickiewicz, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Franz Liszt, and many others.

A detective story unfolded around the burial in the church of the last Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, who abdicated the throne after the third partition of Poland in 1795 and spent his last years in Russia. In 1798, there was a magnificent funeral; the coffin was placed in the Church of Saint Catherine. The coffin remained there until 1938, when Stalin told the Poles: take your king.

This was unexpected for the Polish authorities, researcher Vladimir Bogdanov recounts. They began deciding where to bury him. Kraków’s Wawel Castle was naturally refused because he had the reputation of a traitor king. Warsaw also could not find a place for the exile. A compromise was chosen: the village of Wołczyn, where he was born and baptized.  The funeral in Wołczyn took place on August 14, 1938, when it was still Poland. Tours even began to be conducted to the king’s coffin. However, a year after the funeral, World War II began, after which Wołczyn became a Soviet village.

The church survived the war, but already in April 1945, Father Chiszewicz was offered to leave the church and was sent to Poland. They also suggested he "take your king." The priest refused, saying: "I did not bring him here, so it’s not for me to take him away." The crypt was looted, and the king’s bones were scattered. Vladimir Bogdanov writes: "I personally met a man who held a copy of the Polish Crown, which was also placed in the coffin... Towards the late 1940s, people recalled that the coffin also contained boxes with the king’s decayed liver and heart..."

What happened next? In Soviet times, the Wołczyn church was used as a fertilizer warehouse and was half-ruined. Wikipedia almost unequivocally claims that Poniatowski rests in Warsaw, in the Cathedral of St. John. Indeed, in the late 1980s, two expeditions visited Wołczyn — first Belarusian, then Polish. Everything they found was collected and reburied in the Polish capital. But can this story be closed? According to one version, the king is still here.

The first expedition to the crypt of the Wołczyn church was organized in 1987 by Alexander Milinkevich — now a well-known politician, then a docent at Grodno University. He lists what they found in the crypt: "Quite a lot of fabric — primarily, Poniatowski’s coronation cloak with eagles, embroidered with silver and gold thread. In the center — the Taurus (Ciołek), the Poniatowski family coat of arms... There were heels, parts of coffins. There were three coffins there. The zinc one was turned into buckets — a blacksmith made them for the whole village..." But was there even one bone, one particle of the king’s remains? "Not then. We found some bone fragments, took them to Grodno. Specialists told us — no, they were of animal origin." Vladimir Bogdanov adds that the Poles accepted the version that by that time there were no bones in the coffin — that everything had decayed already in St. Petersburg. "But I managed to gather from witnesses that they definitely saw bones. They saw that there was a lot of gray hair."

The findings of Alexander Milinkevich’s expedition were handed over to the Poles, as they expressed a desire to rebury the "traitor king." Alexander Milinkevich: "A commission from the ministry came and said that the Poles were very interested and wanted to rebury... It was somehow unpleasant for me. After all, he was Belarusian by origin — from the Czartoryski family. I thought something memorial should remain here for us as well. But that was the time — kings were out of fashion. After all, it was still a Soviet state." The Poles conducted their soil analysis from the Wołczyn crypt, allegedly found bone remains — and that was that. "In Gdańsk, they examined soil taken from the niche and found it contained human bone remains. The diseases of these human bones corresponded to those that Stanisław August had." "When rumors spread that the 'king was stolen,' the locals are sure it was the work of the gmina watchman Anton Protasuk. He was Orthodox, a very devout man. Most likely, he simply could not bear how the burial was treated. According to the village, there is evidence: he and his assistant lowered the coffin down, and apparently reburied the remains somewhere. Since about the 1950s, no one remembers there being anything in the coffin." So the mystery remains.

But let us return to our church: the parish administration passed from one Catholic order to another; since its construction it was managed by Benedictines, in the early 19th century by Jesuits, then Dominicans.

In 1813, French General Jean Victor Marie Moreau, a participant in the campaign against Napoleon, was buried here. In January 1837, Georges Charles and Ekaterina Nikolaevna Goncharova (sister of Natalia Goncharova, Pushkin’s wife) were married in the cathedral. In 1858, the funeral of architect Auguste Montferrand took place in the cathedral.

The church’s decoration progressed, with new paintings created based on sketches by architect Hermann Davidovich Grimm and stained glass installed from the Riga workshop of Ernest Tode.

Under Soviet rule, after long negotiations and the removal of Poniatowski’s remains in 1938, the church was closed. Later, the church building was used as storage and housed the Directorate of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism. In the 1970s, restoration of the church began, with plans to create an organ hall for the philharmonic, but a fire in 1984 destroyed all the surviving interior decoration of the church.

In 1992, the church was handed over to the Roman Catholic religious community and restoration of the cathedral began. On Saturday, November 29, 2008, the solemn reopening of the church took place after restoration of the central nave; brickwork, stairs, window and door blocks were also restored, architectural and stucco decoration was recreated, and carving, painting, and stucco work were carried out, along with finishing of wooden structures.

The second phase of restoration — restoration of paintings, stone and tile floors, stained glass, and recreation of sculptures — will begin soon.

In the side altars, restorers left a bookmark — a fragment of untouched surface showing the state of the building before restoration. "This is a piece of history that testifies to the need to preserve our culture, to preserve our heritage," Novikov said.

The restoration council, involving specialists from KGIOP, the State Hermitage Museum, and the State Russian Museum, concluded that the sculptures on the attic of the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Catherine need to be replaced with copies. The sculptures of the four evangelists and the central composition with angels holding a cross were removed from the facade and restored in a workshop for the first time. Based on the examination during restoration, specialists concluded that marble deterioration is increasing due to climate and aggressive atmospheric conditions. Thus, conservation measures are no longer sufficient to preserve the sculptures. To resolve the issue, a restoration council was convened, whose members unanimously concluded that the original sculptures cannot remain outdoors. Copies will be installed on the church attic.

Sources:

https://history.gradpetra.net/prospekt/36/2018-32-34.html

Nevsky Prospect. House by House. 2nd ed., revised, Kirikov B.M., Kirikova L.A., Petrova O.V.

https://euroradio.fm/ru/report/poslednii-polskii-korol-do-sikh-por-pokhoronen-v-belarusi-foto-113112