St. Sophia Cathedral (Harbin)
The former Russian Orthodox St. Sophia Cathedral ( Chinese 哈尔滨 圣 · 索非亚 大教堂 , Pinyin Hā'ěrbīn Shèng Suǒfēiyà Dàjiàotáng , Russian Софийский собор Sofijski sobor style ) in the Daoli district of the city of Harbin , today the Chinese province of Heilongjiang , was built in 1907 in Russian architecture.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China on the mainland in 1949, the Communists ended all Christian missionary activities that had existed for centuries . According to an agreement with the Soviet Union , all Russian churches were placed under Chinese control. With the big leap forward from 1958, the cathedral was initially closed. During the Cultural Revolution from 1966, it was planned to destroy the St. Sophia Cathedral, but it served as a depot for a nearby department store. The windows were bricked up and after a long period of neglect, sprouts grew from the roof. The former center of the city was surrounded on all four sides by high-rise buildings and thus became a solitary building.
Today it houses an architecture museum, in which, among other things, historical photos of the city can be seen. It has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China (4-227) since 1996 .
literature
- Yukiko Koga. "The Atmosphere of a Foreign Country": Harbin's Architectural Inheritance in the Google Book Search. In: Anne M. Cronin, Kevin Hetherington. Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle . Routledge, 2008. p. 229.
Coordinates: 45 ° 46 ′ 5.1 ″ N , 126 ° 37 ′ 17.5 ″ E