Address: Estonia, Tallinn, Toompea elevation
Start of construction: 1895 year
Completion of construction: 1900 year
Project author: Mikhail Timofeevich Preobrazhensky
Coordinates: 59 ° 26'08.6 "N 24 ° 44'20.8" E
Content:
Short description
From any point of Old Tallinn you can see the majestic Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with domes and carved windows. The five-domed bulk of the cathedral stands in the Upper Town, on the Toompea hill and serves as an excellent landmark, and in the evening the building is beautifully illuminated.
View of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral Church is young - it was built in 1895-1900, when the Estland province was part of the Tsar's By the end of the 19th century, the Transfiguration Church, which served as a cathedral, did not meet the increased requirements for the main church in Estonia with its external and internal decoration.
The governor of Estonia, Prince Sergei Vladimirovich Shakhovsky, having received a memorandum from the Orthodox clergy of Revel on the need to build a new cathedral, petitioned Emperor Alexander III for the highest permission to collect donations within the Russian Empire.
View of the Cathedral from Toompea Castle at the main entrance
The Synod allocated 60 thousand rubles for the construction of a new cathedral, but this amount was not enough, and as a result, by September 15, 1899, 434 623 rubles had been collected from all over Russia. The main stumbling block between the members of the committee for the construction of the temple and the German merchants who owned houses on Toompea was the question of the choice of location. But, despite the protests of the Germans, who assured that the "Russian bulbs" would spoil the view of the Hanseatic city, on August 20, 1895, in the presence of Archbishop Arseniy of Riga and Mitava, a solemn laying of the first stone took place in the foundation of the temple. Of the 8 proposed options for the construction of the cathedral, we chose the square located on Toompea in front of the governor's palace (now the building of the Estonian parliament). Two years later, on November 2, 1897, iron crosses were erected over the domes of the new church, gilded by the Petersburg master A.F. Bloom.
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn - the memory of the miraculous salvation of the emperor
The consecration of the new cathedral of Estonia was carried out on April 30, 1900 by Bishop Agafangel of Riga, with the participation of the holy righteous John of Kronstadt. In memory of the salvation of Emperor Alexander III in a railway accident, the cathedral was consecrated in honor of the heavenly patron of the sovereign - the holy noble Prince Alexander Nevsky. On October 17, 1888, when the royal family was returning to St. Petersburg after a vacation in the Crimea, the train derailed at full speed, and only five of the 15 cars survived.
47 people were injured and mutilated, 21 people died. Some of the cars were literally blown to pieces, the transverse and side walls were knocked out. Alexander III, possessing heroic strength, held the collapsed ceiling of the dining car on his shoulders, while his wife and children, who miraculously survived, got out from under the rubble.
Rear view of the cathedral
The Emperor's wife Maria Feodorovna, Tsarevich Nicholas (future Nicholas II), Nicholas's sister Ksenia Alexandrovna and his brother Georgy Alexandrovich, as well as the retinue's guests invited to breakfast, escaped with only minor injuries, bruises, and abrasions.
Architecture and interior decoration of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn was erected in the style of the Moscow-Yaroslavl churches of the 16th - 17th centuries by the project of the Russian architect M.T. Preobrazhensky. The five-domed three-altar temple is distinguished by its rich decorative decoration, which gives the building a solemn and elegant look. The facades are decorated with mosaic icons made by the academician of architecture A. N. Frolov, and stained-glass windows by E. K. Steinke are installed in the altar windows of the main chapel. The gilding of the chapters was made in the summer of 1898 by the master and merchant of the second guild, P. S. Abrosimov.
Cathedral domes
11 cathedral bells with a total weight of 1,613 poods (about 26.4 tons) were cast at a St. Petersburg factory owned by the merchant V.M. Orlov. The interior murals were made according to the sketches of Preobrazhensky. Initially, it was planned to install a marble iconostasis, but during the construction it was replaced by a gilded wooden one as the most suitable for the type of cathedral built on the model of ancient Russian churches. Icons for iconostases and four icon cases were painted in 1889-1899 in the painting workshop of St. Petersburg academician A. Novoskoltsev.
The current state of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
In 1999, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn was awarded the status of stavropegic, that is, directly subordinate to the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, but with the preservation of the chair of the Primate of the EAOC (Moscow Patriarchate) in it.
Main entrance to the cathedral
Interestingly, the predecessor of the now ruling Patriarch of Moscow Kirill - Alexy II - began his career in the 1960s as Bishop of Tallinn at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn.
