RUSSIAN CEMETERY - ORTHODOX CHURCH

It was in 1927 that the Russian princess Vera Mestchersky founded a retirement home in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, near the communal cemetery, for the oldest Russian emigrants who had found refuge in France. When the first boarders died, there was no question of sending the deceased back to Russia! Burial in the nearby cemetery seems obvious. Little by little, a special square in the purest Russian Orthodox style was built up, with its carved wooden Orthodox crosses and niches housing icons and candles. Walking through the alleys, you come across the tombs of personalities including dancers and choreographers Serge Lifar or Rudolf Nureyev - covered with a mosaic in the form of a kilim carpet -, the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, the painter Serge Poliakoff, the writer Ivan Bunin, the dissident Andrei Amalrik, as well as members of the tsarist aristocracy and the imperial aristocracy, including the famous Prince Yusupov, Rasputin's assassin! Within the cemetery stands the blue-bulb church of Our Lady of the Assumption, built in 1938 according to the plans of the architect Albert Benois, who was inspired by the Novgorod churches of the 15th and 16th centuries. Orthodox religious dignitaries are buried in the crypt. The church is attached to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Russian-born community of Saint-Geneviève-des-Bois remains united and retains some of its traditions, including that of the Orthodox Easter festivities.