Description of the attraction
In mid-2003, a chapel was opened on the station square of the city of Pskov, which immortalized the memory of the moment of the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II from the throne. The church building is a cult building 17 meters high, crowned with a dome and a cupola, which has a gilded cross. The covering of the dome is made using sheet copper, and the cross with the head is made of a special alloy, which is made at one of the factories in the city of Chelyabinsk. On the apse from the side of the station hangs a memorial plaque made of marble, which contains an inscription that the chapel was built in the year of the 1100th anniversary of the city of Pskov as a sign of repentance of the city residents about the tragic fate of the last Russian emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov.
On the night of March 3, 1917, Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich was in the train carriage, which was standing on the platform of the Pskov railway station. The last autocrat in Russian history signed a document abdicating the royal throne. It was on this very night that the Russian Empire completely ceased to exist. A year later, on July 17, 1918, in Yekaterinburg, the royal family was brutally shot. Recently, the Holy Royal Martyrs have been canonized: Tsarina Alexandra, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarevich Alexei, as well as the Grand Duchesses Tatiana, Olga, Anastasia and Maria - all of them are glorified in the new chapel of the Resurrection of the Lord.
The consecration of the new chapel took place on July 17, 2003 in honor of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as in memory of the bitter event in Russian history, which led to the abdication of the royal throne of Nicholas II. The author of the chapel project was the architect S. N. Kondratyev, who was looking for stylistic forms for a small chapel that could be combined with the nearby Pskov railway station.
In terms of plan, the royal chapel is a square with complex corners, as well as an entrance on the west side and an apse protrusion on the east side. Its small cubic volume has a wide drum with a hemisphere, which is beautifully crowned with a gilded dome and a cross. The corners of the quadrangle end in the form of strongly lowered small chapters, thus the small chapel has a rather complex five-domed chapel. The corners are accentuated with rusticated white squares, and the walls are decorated with strict and narrow pilasters. Window openings are decorated in completely different ways, for example, the east window is cut in a shape resembling a cross, the upper windows are made in an oval shape, and the windows located on the sides are made narrow and tall, crowned with coils - in general, we can say that the windows look elegant … The completion of the roof, made with the help of multilayer cornices, characterized by a bulbous shape, also adjoins the rather complicated baroque style.
The clear and obvious plan of the chapel, as well as the austere pilasters, are a grateful tribute to classical taste. The decoration of the chapel, on the contrary, features baroque forms, while the most characteristic are the diagonal volutes located in the circle of the lower and upper drums, which greatly complicates the silhouette of the chapel, making it truly interesting. In this case, it is worth noting that such a design of the Chapel of the Resurrection of the Lord may be controversial in terms of stylistics, which is not so typical for the city of Pskov, but the integrity of the general architectural solution is still clearly visible, which harmonizes the appearance of the old square, which has become a real architectural ensemble. The pacified and calm character of the integral plastic interior of the chapel is in harmony with its external composition, which statically overshadows the small-sized Resurrection Chapel, including the square.
As for the coloristic solution of the small church, it can be noted that it combines white, green and golden brown shades, which contributes to the unique unity of the overall picture of the perception of the chapel and the station as the main accent on the square in front of it.
