Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church located in Paris (France) 12, rue Daru, in the 8th arrondissement.
Consecrated in 1861, it is the first permanent place of worship for the Russian Orthodox community in Paris. It is the seat of the Archbishopric of the Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe within the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. The cathedral, including the crypt, has been classified as a historic monument since May 11, 1981.
The church has a Byzantine-Muscovite style (Byzantine inside, Muscovite outside). The architects of the church, members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, are Roman Kouzmin and Ivan Strohm. It has a plan in the shape of a Greek cross. Each branch of the cross ends in an apse. These apses containing paintings by Alexei Bogolioubov are topped with turrets ending in “chatior” (spires) decorated with golden bulbs, themselves topped with the eight-branched Russian cross. The five bulbs symbolize Christ accompanied by the four Evangelists. The central spire has a height of 48 m.
Associated notable people
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko, the first People’s Commissar for Health of Soviet Russia, married Nadezhda Mikhailovna Nelidova (née Sokolskaia) 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.
Address: 12 Rue Daru, 75008 Paris, France.
Hours:
Sunday 8:45 AM–1 PM, 3–6 PM
Monday Closed
Tuesday 9 AM–12 PM, 3–6 PM
Wednesday 9 AM–12 PM
Thursday 9 AM–12 PM, 3–6 PM
Friday 9 AM–12 PM, 3–6 PM
Saturday 9 AM–12 PM, 4–7:30 PM
Phone: +33 1 42 27 37 34
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