Saint Alexander Nevsky Church, Orthodox church in Park Aloye pole, Chelyabinsk, Russia
Saint Alexander Nevsky Church is a red brick building featuring Russian Revival architecture with prominent cross domes set within a public park in Chelyabinsk. The structure serves as an Orthodox place of worship with active religious services.
In 1881 Alexander Square was laid out on the city's edge, and merchant Kutyrev began a chapel there without an architect; the work was halted and demolished. In 1907 construction resumed to a design by Alexander Pomerantsev, and services began in 1916. Closed in 1930, the building later held a print shop, a planetarium and archives; from the early 1980s it was restored for the philharmonic as an organ hall.
The square around the church was renamed Aloye Pole (Red Field) after 1917 in memory of the 1905 events, and the church itself was closed on 4 March 1930. Its interior paintings, made in 1914–1916 by the workshop of artist V. M. Oshchepkov, depict canonised Russian saints: Alexander Nevsky, Metropolitan Jonah, Boris and Gleb, Yaroslav the Wise and Vladimir Monomakh.
The church stands in Aloye Pole Park, on the site of the former Alexander Square laid out in 1881. The building is a regional cultural heritage site; it reopened for worship after the organ was removed in December 2013. Visitors should dress modestly and keep quiet during services.
The organ was dismantled in December 2013, after the last concert on 27 November 2013. Restoration from the early 1980s had rebuilt 13 domes at a height of 30 m: the largest onions measure 2 m across and 5 m high, the smallest 1.2 m, each topped by a 2.5 m spire. Architects worked from Pomerantsev's undimensioned drawings found in a Leningrad archive.
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