Kazan Cathedral, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, stands as one of the great neoclassical monuments of Saint Petersburg, and this albumen carte-de-visite captures its north facade along Nevsky Prospekt in a wide, carefully composed view dating to the 1860s or 1870s. The photograph is a CDV-format albumen print mounted on a plain cream card with no photographer's imprint on the reverse.

The sweeping semicircular colonnade of 96 columns opening onto Nevsky Prospekt dominates the image, with the terminal portico at left and the answering open colonnade extending across the full right half of the frame. The central dome, rising to a height of 71.6 meters, crowns the composition above the pediment at center, its lantern clearly resolved against a pale, overcast sky. A solitary pedestrian figure stands in the broad cobblestone square at midground, and a bronze monument is visible at the base of the left portico.

Constructed between 1801 and 1811, the cathedral was designed by architect Andrey Voronikhin, who drew inspiration from St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. After Napoleon's expulsion from Russia, the cathedral became a war memorial, where in 1813 the ashes of Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov were laid to rest, and trophies of the Patriotic War of 1812 were housed.

The reverse bears two pencil inscriptions: "Russian Church" in a horizontal hand at upper left, and a second notation in a diagonal cursive hand along the right edge, partially legible as "Russische Kirche" (German for "Russian Church").