Trinity Cathedral (Paris)

Trinity Cathedral (2017)

The Trinity Cathedral in Paris ( French Cathédrale de la Sainte-Trinité ) is a Russian Orthodox church in the French capital Paris . The cathedral belongs to the Diocese of Chersonese of the Patriarchate of Moscow and all of Russia . It was completed in 2016.

location

View of the cathedral from the 3rd floor of the Eiffel Tower (2017)

The church is part of a complex consisting of four buildings, the Center spirituel et culturel orthodoxe russe (CSCOR, German Russian Orthodox spiritual and cultural center ). It is located on a plot of more than 4000 m² in an exposed location in the heart of the city, directly on the Seine on its left bank in the 7th arrondissement . The Eiffel Tower is nearby, about 600 m to the southwest. The CSCOR is bordered to the north by the Quai Branly , to the east by Place de la Résistance and Avenue Rapp and to the south by Rue de l'Université . To the west, the complex borders the Palais de l'Alma . On the river side, the Pont de l'Alma bridge is located directly opposite the CSCOR and the cathedral.

history

Headquarters of Météo-France on the site of the current cathedral, shortly before its demolition (2013), in the background the Eiffel Tower

View from Quai Branly to the building under construction, in the foreground the Palais de l'Alma (2016)

View of the cathedral from the Place de la Résistance (2017)

The interior of the church (November 2017)

Visit of Vladimir Putin (May 29, 2017)

On the property of today's CSCOR, the French weather service Météo-France had its headquarters in service buildings that were built in the late 1940s until 2010 .

In 2009, the French state under President Nicolas Sarkozy offered the property for sale. The Russian state , but also China , Saudi Arabia and Canada were among the buyers . Ultimately, Russia won the bid and bought the property in 2010. The officially announced price was 70 million euros . Sarkozy had campaigned for Russia in the sale after he had promised the Patriarch of Moscow in Paris in 2007 that a new church would be built.

In the architecture competition for the project, the Russian side initially favored the design by the Spanish architect with Russian roots Manuel Núñez Yanowsky . This, however, was particularly displeasing to the then Parisian mayor Bertrand Delanoë ( PS ), who saw the massive display of religiosity as inappropriate for the place. After Nicolas Sarkozy had been replaced as President of the Republic by François Hollande in 2012 , the design by French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte was finally selected for realization.

Construction work began in 2013. The Russian state took over the construction costs of 100 million euros. Russian President Vladimir Putin had planned to travel to Paris for the inauguration . Due to tensions between Russia and France under President François Hollande because of Russian involvement in the civil war in Syria and the war in Ukraine , the visit did not take place.

In this context, the inauguration took place on October 18, 2016 without the participation of French government members. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo , the former minister of justice under Nicolas Sarkozy and mayor of the 7th arrondissement, Rachida Dati , as well as the politicians Jean-Pierre Chevènement and Gilbert Collard were present . Also present was Sarkozy's former culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand . In his book La Récréation , published in 2013, about his time as minister, he had also written about how the project came about and jokingly called it Saint Vladimir , a name that was later also used in the media, referring to the Russian ruler . On the Russian side, the highest-ranking visitor was the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky .

Even before the inauguration, expropriated shareholders of the former Russian petro company Yukos had obtained a judgment in the arbitration proceedings in The Hague for compensation from the Russian state amounting to 50 billion US dollars . In 2015 they tried to have the Paris property expropriated. However, the French judiciary ruled against the plaintiffs.

The consecration took place on December 3, 2016 the Moscow Patriarch Kirill I take. Church dignitaries of various denominations among the participants included Cardinal Kurt Koch and the Apostolic Nuncio in France, Luigi Ventura . The representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , who rival the Moscow Patriarchate , John of Charioupolis , Archbishop ( Exarch ) of the Exarchate of Orthodox Congregations of Russian Tradition in Western Europe , was also present. A total of 12 bishops attended the ceremony. The secular guests included Anne Hidalgo , Mayor of Paris, Svetlana Medvedeva , wife of the Russian Prime Minister, the theater director Robert Hossein and the singer Mireille Mathieu .

Vladimir Putin finally visited the cathedral for the first time on the occasion of a visit to the newly elected President Emmanuel Macron in late May 2017.

Building description

The cathedral is a tall building made of light-colored stone with a horizontal structure. The building floor plan is almost square. It has only a few window slots. According to ancient Russian tradition, it has five gilded onion domes, the largest of which symbolizes Jesus Christ in the center and the four smaller ones the evangelists of the New Testament .

The base of the cathedral is only 450 m² with an interior height under the dome of 36 m. When the church was consecrated, the iconostasis was still provisional; it was later to be replaced by a permanent structure made of marble. The interior walls were also still white and awaited decoration with frescoes and mosaics .

use

In addition to the use of the church for the diocese of Korsun of the Patriarchate of Moscow, the outbuildings of the CSCOR also house a Russian-French primary school, a cultural center and the cultural department of the Russian embassy. For this reason, the building complex enjoys extraterritorial status . This fact caused concern in the run-up to the French secret services, because in the immediately adjacent Palais de l'Alma there are offices of the presidential office as well as official apartments of ministers and presidential advisors, which could be wiretapped from the CSCOR premises.

The Trinity Cathedral is the second Russian cathedral in Paris next to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, built between 1859 and 1861, of the Exarchate of Orthodox Congregations of Russian Tradition in Western Europe , which has been under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople since 1931 . The Trinity Cathedral replaced the Église des Trois-Saints-Docteurs , which had been used by the faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate since 1931 , initially only a converted garage, later a floor of a residential building in the 15th arrondissement of the city. It had become too narrow in the decades since the end of the Soviet Union.