Description of the attraction
The Lutheran Church of St. Mary in the resort town of Yalta is one of the few operating churches of this denomination in Crimea. The religious building is located opposite the Partizansky Lane.
The Lutheran Church of St. Mary is over 130 years old. The church was erected in 1885 with funds donated by parishioners of the Lutheran faith, as well as by the Russian and German emperors.
The first information about the existence of a Lutheran parish in the city of Yalta dates back to the 70s. 19 century, at a time when the believers were under the control of the Lutheran consistory in St. Petersburg. In 1874 the General Council of the consistory appealed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a request to allocate land for them to build a church. A small plot of land allocated soon for the construction of the church belonged to the famous local architect G. F. Schreiber. After a while, the collection of donations for the construction of the church began, which was carried out by the townspeople-Lutherans. In a short time, they collected about 17 thousand rubles. At the beginning of 1874, Bishop Richter sent a presentation to Adjutant General A. Tomashev to consider the project of the church, developed by the architect G. Schreiber. Having considered the project, the commission of the construction committee returned it for revision, making a number of comments.
The church was under construction for 10 years. The architect made the building of the Lutheran Church in the neo-Gothic style. In addition to pointed arches in the entrance and window openings, the facade was decorated with a pointed bell tower in the form of a hexagonal pyramid, which was eventually destroyed.
In 1917. the church was closed. Later it housed a chess club, and only in 1993 the church was returned to the ownership of the Yalta Evangelical Lutheran community. Today the Church of St. Mary in Yalta is the best preserved Lutheran church in Crimea. It is the spiritual center of the German community of Greater Yalta.
