David Ivanovich Grimm (; 1823–1898) was a Russian Imperial architect, educator and historian of art of Byzantine Empire, Georgia and Armenia. Grimm belonged to the second generation of Russian neo-Byzantine architects and was the author of Orthodox cathedrals in Tbilisi, Chersonesos and smaller churches in Russia and Western Europe. Grimm was a long-term professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts and chaired its Department of Architecture in 1887-1892. Biography David Grimm was born in a Lutheran German family and attended the German Saint Peter's School in Saint Petersburg. He completed the class of Alexander Brullov at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1841-1848. His graduation honours entitled Grimm to take an Academy-sponsored study tour of Italy and France, but it was cancelled due to the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. Rather than waiting until the end of hostilities, Grimm opted for a study tour of the Caucasus (1849–1850) that exposed him to the wealth of vernacular Georgian and Armenian architecture. In 1852–1855 Grimm travelled to Asia Minor, Italy and Greece, studying the Byzantine relics. These studies were summarized in Grimm's 12-volume Monuments of Byzantine architecture in Georgia and Armenia (1859–1856) and subsequent works. Grimm became a professor of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1856 and at the Academy in 1859. In 1858 empress Maria Alexandrovna commissioned Grimm to design the cathedral in Chersonesos, on the site of a Greek church where Vladimir I of Kiev was baptized in 988. Construction of the cathedral commenced before the Crimean War to the design by Konstantin Thon; after the war, his design was discarded and work began from scratch. Maria's choice was influenced by another Byzantine scholar, Grigory Gagarin. Grimm's design was approved in June 1859 and displayed to the public the next year. Unlike contemporary Byzantine architects, Grimm based his draft on Georgian legacy, employing polygonal surfaces instead of Byzantine cylinders and domes. Construction started in 1861 and, despite royal sponsorship, proceeded very slowly: the structure was completed in 1876, and the interiors in 1897. The Chersonesus Cathedral remained a sole example of the Georgian line in Byzantine revival until it reappeared shortly before World War I. The other commission of the Romanovs, a Byzantine chapel in Nice, commemorating the late Nicholas Alexandrovich, was completed in less than two years, 1866–1868). In the next twenty years Grimm designed numerous Orthodox "embassy churches", including the Russian Church, Geneva, the Alexander Nevsky Church,