Fingal's Cave a walkway just above high-water level permitting exploration on foot. From the inside, the entrance seems to frame the island of Iona across the water. Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn visited in 1829 and wrote an overture, "The Hebrides", Op. 26, (also known as "Fingal's Cave overture"), inspired by the weird echoes in the cave. Mendelssohn's overture popularized the cave as a tourist destination. Other famous 19th-century visitors included author Jules Verne, who used it in his book "Le Rayon Vert" ("The Green Ray"), and mentions it in the novels "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "The Mysterious Island";
1812 Overture impetus for the project. In 1882, during the All-Russia Arts and Industry Exhibition, the Overture was performed in a tent next to the unfinished cathedral. The cathedral was completed on May 26, 1883. Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky complained to his patron Nadezhda von Meck that he was "... not a conductor of festival pieces," and that the "Overture" would be "... very loud and noisy, but [without] artistic merit, because I wrote it without warmth and without love." He put it together in six weeks. It is this work that would make the Tchaikovsky estate exceptionally wealthy, as it is one of