St Nicholas Cathedral in Nice is the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe. It is a part of Russian history, controversial and tragic.
The cathedral stands on the site of the former Villa Bermont, where in 1865 the heir to the Russian throne, Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, died. At the boy's birth, his grandfather, the indomitable Nicholas I, was so moved that he ordered his three younger sons, Grand Dukes Constantine, Nicholas and Michael, to immediately swear an oath of loyalty to the future Tsar. When the eldest son of Emperor Alexander II grew up, it turned out that he had everything that a future monarch needed: intelligence, will, character, and pleasant appearance. The young man received an excellent education and was ready to take the burden of duties of the monarch of a huge country.
In 1864, Tsesarevich went abroad (traditionally, the heirs made two large familiarisation voyages: in Russia and around the world). During the trip, the twenty-one-year-old Nikolai Alexandrovich became engaged to the sixteen-year-old Danish Princess Dagmar. It was not only a dynastic marriage: the young people really fell in love with each other.
They were not destined to marry. While travelling in Italy, the heir became ill, for treatment he stayed in Nice at the Villa Bermont. In the spring his condition worsened. Doctors were powerless. Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria urgently arrived in Nice (their train crossed Europe in 85 hours, an unprecedented speed for those years), but it was too late. On 12 April 1865 the Tsesarevich died in agony. The reason for this was tuberculous meningitis.
To immortalise the memory of his son, Alexander II decided to build a chapel on the site of Villa Bermont. Its design was drawn up by David Ivanovich Grimm, a professor at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. The marble chapel-monument in Byzantine style was opened in 1868. The municipality of Nice named the nearest street to it Boulevard Tsarevicha.
In the early nineties of the XIX century, the growing Russian community of Nice needed a church of sufficient size. In memory of the untimely deceased, the imperial couple took patronage over the construction of a new church. It was erected next to the chapel according to the project of Russian architect Mikhail Timofeevich Preobrazhensky in 1912. The Holy Synod decided to consider the temple a cathedral.
The cathedral was built on the model of Moscow five-domed churches of the XVII century. For masonry walls used light-brown German brick, finishing - from the local pink granite. Inside the cathedral there is a rich painting: a magnificent iconostasis and the royal gates, cenotes, a lot of frescoes. The crypt houses the museum of the Russian colony in Nice.
The polychrome tiles of the cathedral glittering in the sun can be seen from afar. In southern Nice it seems like a piece of the former Russian land, transferred to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Next to the cathedral there is a bust of Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, installed in 2012. The monuments are surrounded by lush greenery: back in the XIX century the authorities of Nice decided in memory of the Russian heir never to build up this place. The decision is still in force.
