page_title: Neo-Byzantine architecture in the Russian Empire
section_title: Reign of Nicholas II
hierarchical_section_title: Neo-Byzantine architecture in the Russian Empire / History / Reign of Nicholas II
caption_attribution_description: Stromynka, 10 - Sokolniki Hospital, Moscow
context_page_description: Russian-Byzantine architecture is a revivalist direction in Russian architecture and decorative and applied arts, based on the interpretation of the forms of Byzantine and Ancient Russian architecture. As part of eclecticism could be combined with other styles.
  The style originated in the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century. The founder of this style is considered to be Konstantin Thon. Formed in the early 1830s as an entire direction, the Russian-Byzantine style was inextricably linked with the concept of nationality, expressing the idea of cultural self-sufficiency of Russia, as well as its political and religious continuity in relation to Byzantine Empire. In a narrow sense, the Russian-Byzantine style referred as the style of Konstantin Thon, common in the second third of the 19th century, and post Thon style, that began in the 1850s and more similar to the Byzantine architecture, called the Neo-Byzantine style.
  Russian-Byzantine style became an officially endorsed preferred architectural style for church construction during the reign of Alexander II of Russia.
context_section_description: The personal tastes of the last emperor were mosaic: he promoted 17th-century Russian art in interior design and costume, yet displayed aversion to Russian Revival architecture. Nicholas or his Ministry of the Court did not demonstrate a lasting preference for any style; his last private commission, the Lower dacha in Peterhof, was a Byzantine design following a string of neoclassical revival buildings. State-funded construction was largely decentralised and managed by individual statesmen with their own agendas. For a short period preceding the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, Byzantine style apparently became the choice of state, at least of the Imperial Navy which sponsored high-profile construction projects at metropolitan and overseas bases.
  The architecture of the last twenty years of the Russian Empire was marked by a rapid succession of Art Nouveau and neoclassical revival. These styles dominated the private construction market but failed to get a firm niche in official Orthodox Church projects. However, Art Nouveau ideas slowly infiltrated traditional Byzantine architecture. Its influence was obvious in the furnishings of traditional Byzantine churches (Naval Cathedral in Kronstadt). Members of Art Nouveau (Fyodor Schechtel, Sergey Solovyov) and neoclassical (Vladimir Adamovich) schools created their own versions of the Byzantine style – either highly decorative (Schechtel's church in Ivanovo) or, on the contrary, "streamlined" (Solovyov's church in Kuntsevo). Eventually, the "northern" variety of Art Nouveau (Ilya Bondarenko) became the style of the legalized Old Believers.
  Fragmentation of style in small-scale projects developed in parallel to four very large, conservatively styled Neo-Byzantine cathedrals: the Naval Cathedral in Kronstadt, cathedrals in Tsaritsyn, Poti (present-day Georgia) and Sofia (Bulgaria). Three of them (Kronstadt, Poti, Sofia) were a clear homage to the Hagia Sophia; their authors apparently dismissed the "golden rule" of single-dome designs established in the previous decades. Exact reasons for this change in style are unknown; in case of the Kronstadt cathedral it can be traced to direct intervention by Admiral Makarov.
  Poti cathedral, designed by Alexander Zelenko and Robert Marfeld, was unusual in being the first major church project built in reinforced concrete. It was structurally completed in a single construction season (1906–1907); the whole project took less than two years (November 1905 – July 1907), an absolute record for the period. Kronstadt cathedral, also employing concrete, was structurally complete in four construction seasons (1903–1907) due to delays caused by the revolution of 1905. Other projects did not fare as well; Dorogomilovo cathedral in Moscow (1898–1910), designed to be the city's second largest, was plagued by money shortages and in the end consecrated in an incomplete, stripped-down form.
caption: Boyev almshouse in Sokolniki, Moscow, completed shortly after the ascension of Nicholas II. The tented roofs of the side towers are borrowed from contemporary Russian Revival toolset.
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