Protests have broken out since the city’s government announced earlier this month that it was turning over custody of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a 19th-century gem that was made into a museum by the Soviets, to the Russian Orthodox Church. Secular Russians fear that the church may not be a careful steward of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Tensions went even higher after parliament deputy speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, Leo’s great-grandson, gave a speech criticizing the protests that was widely interpreted as anti-Semitic.)