Nativity Cathedral, Riga
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the Orthodox cathedral of Riga. See other articles for the Lutheran cathedral and the Roman Catholic cathedral.
The Nativity of Christ Cathedral , Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
was built to a design by Nikolai Chagin
Nikolai Chagin
Nikolay Mikhailovich Chagin was a Russian architect active primarily in Vilnius and the Crimea. He took part in the Siege of Sevastopol and served as Vilno's main architect for 38 years. Chagin mastered the Byzantine Revival and several other revivalist styles, often blending them at will...
in a Neo-Byzantine style between 1876 and 1883, during the period when the country was part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. It is the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Baltic provinces
Baltic provinces
The Baltic governorates , originally the Ostsee governorates is a collective name for the administrative units of the Russian Empire set up at the territories of Swedish Estonia, Swedish Livonia and, afterwards, of Duchy of Courland and Semigallia .-History:The Treaty of Vilnius of 1561 included...
built with the blessing of the Russian Tsar Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
on the initiative of local governor-general Pyotr Bagration
Peter Bagrationi
Peter Bagrationi or Pyotr Romanovich Bagration, the son of a Russian-Georgian general, was a Russian-Georgian statesman, general and scientist who invented the first dry galvanic cell.- Biography :...
and bishop Veniamin Karelin. The Nativity of Christ Cathedral is renowned for its icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
s, some of which were painted by Vasili Vereshchagin
Vasili Vasilyevich Vereshchagin
Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin was one of the most famous Russian battle painters and one of the first Russian artists to be widely recognized abroad. The graphic nature of his realist scenes led many of them to never be printed or exhibited....
. During the First World War German troops occupied Riga and turned its largest Russian Orthodox cathedral into a Lutheran church. In independent Latvia the Nativity of Christ Cathedral once again became an Orthodox cathedral in 1921, although the new government tried to force the change of the liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
language into Latvian. Archbishop Jānis Pommers, a native Latvian, played a key part in the defence of the cathedral. In the early 1960s Soviet authorities closed down the cathedral and converted its building into a planetarium
Planetarium
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...
. The cathedral has been restored since Latvia regained independence from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1991.