Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Paris

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky
Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky de Paris
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
48°52′39.3″N 2°18′7.1″E
Location	Paris
Country	France
Denomination	Russian Orthodox Church
Website	cathedrale-orthodoxe.com
History
Founder(s)	Joseph Vassiliev, Alexander II of Russia
Consecrated	11 September 1861
Architecture
Heritage designation	Monument Historique PA00088807
Designated	11 May 1981
Architect(s)	Roman Kouzmine, Ivan Strohm
Architectural type	Cathedral
Style	Byzantine
Groundbreaking	3 March 1859
Administration
Archdiocese	Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe
Clergy
Archbishop	John of Dubna

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (Template:Lang-fr, Template:Lang-ru) is a Russian Orthodox cathedral church located at 12 rue Daru in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It was established and consecrated in 1861, making it the first Russian Orthodox place of worship in France. It is the see of the Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe, recently transferred to the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow. It was built in part through a gift of 200,000 francs from Tsar Alexander II. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral had not been aligned with the Patriarch of Moscow since the Russian Revolution. But as of 14 September 2019 the jurisdiction of the parish community of the cathedral was transferred to the Patriarchate of Moscow. The cathedral should not be confused with Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, which is a provincial cathedral of the Patriarchal Exarchate in Western Europe (Moscow Patriarchate). The closest métro station is Courcelles

Associated notable people

• Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko, the first People's Commissar for Health of Soviet Russia, married Nadezhda Mikhailovna Nelidova (née Sokol’skaia) here on 13 August 1909.
• Artist Pablo Picasso married Olga Khokhlova here on 12 July 1918; the witnesses were Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Guillaume Apollinaire.
• Henri Troyat made his first marriage here in 1938.
• Vladimir Kramnik married here in 2006. He is the former world chess champion.
• The funerals of several noted Russian artists, writers, and other cultural figures were held here: Ivan Turgenev in 1883, Fyodor Chaliapin in 1938, Wassily Kandinsky in 1944, George Gurdjieff in 1949, Ivan Bunin in 1953, Andrei Tarkovsky in 1987, and Henri Troyat in 2007.
• Alexander Schmemann, noted Russian theologian and writer, and future dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary (1962-1983) in New York, served here in the 1930s as an altar boy and sub-deacon.
• Vassily Voskresensky aka Colonel Wassily de Basil, impresario of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo (and its iterations) was buried here in 1951.

Representation in other media

The 1956 film Anastasia, about one of the daughters of the imperial Romanov family, features the Cathedral in one of its first scenes.

Gallery

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Bibliography

• Nicolas Ross, Saint-Alexandre sur-Seine, édition du CERF.