Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Paris

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (French: Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky, Russian: Собор Святого Александра Невского, romanized: Sobor Svyatogo Aleksandra Nyevskogo) is a Russian Orthodox cathedral church located at 12 Rue Daru in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The closest métro station is Courcelles .

The cathedral was established and consecrated in 1861, making it the first Russian Orthodox place of worship in France. It was constructed in part through a gift of 200,000 francs from Tsar Alexander II. Under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of 1931, the parish retroceded to the Moscow Patriarchate in 2019, becoming the see of the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe.

It should not be confused with Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, which is a provincial cathedral of the Patriarchal Exarchate in Western Europe (Moscow Patriarchate).

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’s first marriage was conducted here in 1938.
• Former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik married here in 2006.
• 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 as an altar boy and sub-deacon in the 1930s.
• 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

Bibliography

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

References