St. Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Church, Riga, Latvia

Construction of this Classicist wooden building began in 1820 and was completed five years later. In 1862 its eclectic-style belfry was added. Yellow and round with a large green dome, it’s hard to miss it on the corner of Brīvības and Blaumaņa. Inside you’ll find three porticoes, beautiful icons and, unusually, a central altar in the middle of the room.

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User Reviews

Oksana Vinkarklina (14 months ago)
Nice church, beggars sitting outside

Ignas Skudrickas (2 years ago)
Beautiful small church

Jonas (2 years ago)
Very nice churche with a unique architectural style. Not the most interesting church in Riga but if you're near it and have time to burn, it's definitely worth checking out.

Jeff Clay (2 years ago)
Located on the corner of two busy streets it is attractive outside but difficult to photograph. Beautiful church inside (no photos).

Vita Pokovba (2 years ago)
Delightful and beautiful church. With amazing people inside. God bless them and everyone who visits the church.

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Frans.Sellies

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The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

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UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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