Description of the attraction
For more than a hundred years, Samara has been adorned with the most beautiful building of the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was built and consecrated in 1906 on one of the central streets of old Samara - Saratovskaya, now Frunze Street. The temple was built according to the project of the architect F. O. Bogdanovich (the author of the Moscow Cathedral) under the leadership of the Samara architect A. A. Shcherbachev. The construction of the building in the Neo-Gothic style, having the shape of a cross in the base plan, took about six years (1900-1906). During the consecration, the temple was richly decorated and the organ sounded.
After the revolution, in the looted building of the Catholic church, there were alternately located: a children's theater, a theater technical school, a cinema, a builders' club, and in 1938 the most beautiful religious building was occupied by an anti-religious museum. Since 1941, the place of the anti-religious one was taken by the Regional Museum of Local Lore, which was located in the church until the building was returned to the Catholic community.
Today, the historic building houses the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which belongs to the Middle Volga deanery of the Diocese of St. Clement. The pride of the temple is the altar fresco - a copy of the painting of the great artist Salvador Dali "Christ of St. John of the Cross" and the organ, ordered from Austria. The architecture, unusual for the Volga region, with pinnacles on the facade reaching 47 meters in height, stands out strongly from the general urban massif and is one of the main architectural attractions of Samara.
The temple is open for free guided tours and private visits.
