The other large monastery in St. Petersburg, Smolni, by the bend in the river, has buildings surrounding two huge courts which are made very pleasant by trees. The first, which is much the larger, has a covered cloister all round and a high dome in each corner. The centre of the western side is left open to expose to the street the chief façade of the church, which, like the Chantry at Winchester, stands detached in the centre of the court. It is a simple and impressive Italian Renaissance building, 245 feet long, with pilasters on two levels and in the centre a lofty tower, open to the top within. The interior is all white, some marble shafts giving relief to the eternal plaster. Designed by Rastrelli in 1734, the structure follows the type of his native country, except that five great onion domes mark as Russian the top of the tower. The faults of the building are glaring enough, but Fergusson seems rather severe in his remark: "It would be difficult to find in Europe anything so really bad as this." [143] Its dimensions are 731 by 584 feet. There are three stories with pilasters on two levels, but the architrave bends over each of the upper windows, and the consequent loss of the horizontal line that is of the very essence of Classic architecture, is absolutely fatal to the effect. Several halls and other chambers within are extremely magnificent, but the most glorious columns of marble support gilded capitals of plaster, and there is a good deal to justify Fergusson's observation about a man of taste recoiling in horror from such a piece of barbaric magnificence. The chapel is frankly Russian with the customary onion dome. The figures of the eikonastasis stand out detached, though the Eastern Church as a rule holds anything more than very slight relief as a breach of the Second Commandment. This little building contains some priceless relics, hands of the Baptist and of the Virgin, a fragment of the body of St. George, a piece of the true cross, a picture painted by St. Luke! There are relics nearer our own day in the chamber where the second Alexander died in 1881, after being wounded by the bomb (p. 253). His empty study chair, the books as he left them on the table, the few coins in his pocket when he went out for the last time, his unfinished cigarette, his coat thrown over the back of a chair, the couch on which he passed away.