Saint Nicolas Cathedral
The Saint-Nicolas Cathedral in Nice is the largest Russian Orthodox church outside Russia. The impressive sacred building with the ground plan of a cross and its five domes is located in a small park on the Boulevard du Tzarévitch and is one of the most visited sights in Nice.
Cathédrale Saint-Nicolas de Nice
The last Russian Tsar Nicholas II (1868 - 1918) had the church built at the beginning of the 20th century in memory of his uncle, the Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Romanow (1843-1865), who died of meningitis in Nice on 24th April 1865 at the age of only 22. Due to the ever-growing Russian community in Nice, the previous church in the Rue Longchamp had become too small. So in 1903 the construction work for a new church was started. Mikhail T. Preobraženskij, a professor at the Russian Academy of Arts according to the designs of the Russian architect Michel Preobrajenski. After almost ten years of construction, the Saint-Nicolas Cathedral was solemnly consecrated in 1912. It has been a listed building since 1987.
Already shortly after the English aristocracy chose Nice and the Rivera as a holiday destination Already in the second half of the 19th century, the Russian presence in Nice was very significant, as at that time, many Russian aristocrats visited the French Riviera. Right after the opening of the railway line to Nice in the year 1864, also Tsar Alexander II. arrived by train.
Controversy about the church
After the seizure of power of the communists in Russia and the assassination of the tsar family in the year 1918, the cathedral in Nizza was for a long time
After the end of the hereditary lease on 31 July 2007, a legal dispute lasting several years ensued between the local organisation that had looked after the church until then and the Russian Federation, which considered the cathedral to be its property and wanted to place it under the control of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Russian Federation was finally granted.
