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| HOME / TOP 10 ATTRACTIONS OF MOSCOW / CHURCH OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR |
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Church of Christ the Savior
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The enormous gleaming golden dome and gigantic structure of the newly built Cathedral of Christ the Savior is visible from all over central Moscow and is the largest church in Russia. The original Cathedral was built by the architect Konstantin Ton between 1839 and 1883 to commemorate Russia's victory over Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars. The church was later demolished in 1933 on Stalin's orders, but was built anew in the 1990s.
Konstantin Ton's original neo-Russian design was chosen from a large selection of architectural projects presented to a Moscow contest in the 1830s. The design mirrored the traditional plan of a Russian Orthodox church but on an unprecedented scale, causing much controversy over its proportions and aesthetic qualities. Despite considerable debate about its design, the church was completed and lavishly decorated, although none of its original decor survived the Bolshevik assault of the 1930s.
The church was demolished in 1933 in order to free the land for the construction of a House of Soviets - a massive skyscraper intended to house various government authorities and promote the Soviet regime. The building was to be topped with a 100-meter-tall aluminum statue of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. However, due to numerous technical difficulties the building was never actually constructed and the site was instead devoted to the creation of an outdoor pool, which occupied the area till the early 90s, when government officials began to seriously consider a project to rebuild the church as it had been in Ton's day.
The recreation of the Church of Christ the Savior was considered a symbol of Russia's spiritual revival after the long years of atheistic Communist rule. In the early 90s a public fund was set up to raise money for the costly project. The reconstruction raised considerable patriotic feeling amongst many Russians, although some Muscovites opposed the project on aesthetic grounds, claiming that the hastily built replica of the original church lacked elegance and balanced proportions. Many also saw the massive construction project as an entirely ego-motivated attempt by Moscow Major Yuri Luzhkov to leave his mark on the city, as many powerful rulers had done before him. |
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