Press release
17th March 2022
St Paul’s announces Handel’s Messiah on 30th March 2022, the first time the concert has been performed at St Paul’s Cathedral since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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After the rejection of the Great Model in the latter part of 1674, Wren prepared several designs for a new Cathedral on a cruciform plan.
The dramatic increase in funding from 1686 was the main factor behind a major revision to the design that can be dated from mid-1685.
The design, construction and decoration of the choir enclosure and sanctuary occupied Wren and his assistants at least four and a half years.
Wren’s revisions to the design in 1685–86 created a podium for a vast, richly modelled Dome, inspired by those of Michelangelo’s St Peter’s in Rome and Jules Hardouin-Mansart’s Invalides church in Paris.
Wren had always intended a belfry in one of the towers at the west end of the Cathedral.
The earliest known scheme to improve the Cathedral churchyard is an outline study by Wren and Hawksmoor, drawn over a survey of the whole precinct prepared by William Dickinson.