Description of the attraction
St. Nicholas Cathedral of Nice is the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe. This is part of Russian history, contradictory and tragic.
The cathedral stands on the site of the former Villa Bermon, where the heir to the Russian throne, Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, died in 1865. At the birth of the boy, his grandfather, the unyielding Nicholas I, was so moved that he ordered his three youngest sons, Grand Dukes Konstantin, Nicholas and Mikhail, to immediately swear an oath of loyalty to the future tsar. When the eldest son of Emperor Alexander II grew up, it was discovered that he had everything a future monarch needed: intelligence, will, character, good looks. The young man received an excellent education and was ready to take on the burden of the duties of the monarch of a huge country.
In 1864, the Tsarevich went abroad (according to tradition, the heirs made two large familiarization voyages: across Russia and around the world). During the trip, the twenty-one-year-old Nikolai Alexandrovich became engaged to the sixteen-year-old Danish princess Dagmar. It was not only a dynastic marriage: the young people really fell in love with each other.
They were not destined to get married. During a trip to Italy, the heir fell ill, for treatment he stopped in Nice at the Villa Bermont. In the spring, his condition worsened. The doctors were powerless. Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria urgently arrived in Nice (their train crossed Europe in 85 hours, an unprecedented speed for those years), but it was too late. On April 12, 1865, the Tsarevich died in agony. The reason for this was tuberculous meningitis.
To perpetuate the memory of his son, Alexander II decided to build a chapel on the site of the Bermon villa. Her project was compiled by Professor of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts David Ivanovich Grimm. The Byzantine style marble chapel was opened in 1868. The municipality of Nice named the street closest to it Tsarevich Boulevard.
In the early nineties of the 19th century, the sprawling Russian community of Nice needed a church of sufficient size. In memory of the untimely deceased, the imperial couple took patronage over the construction of a new church. It was erected next to the chapel by the Russian architect Mikhail Timofeevich Preobrazhensky in 1912. The Holy Synod decided to consider the temple as a cathedral.
The cathedral was built on the model of the Moscow five-domed churches of the 17th century. Light brown German bricks were used for the masonry of the walls, and the decoration was made of local pink granite. Inside the cathedral there is a rich painting: a magnificent iconostasis and the royal gates, icon cases, many frescoes. The crypt houses the Museum of the Russian Colony in Nice.
The polychrome tiles of the cathedral, sparkling in the sun, are visible from afar. In southern Nice, it seems like a piece of the former Russian land, transferred to the Mediterranean coast. Next to the cathedral there is a bust of Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, installed in 2012. The monuments are surrounded by lush greenery: back in the 19th century, the authorities of Nice decided never to build up this place in memory of the Russian heir. The decision is still valid.
