ÉGLISE ORTHODOXE RUSSE (RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH)
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It can be spotted from afar, especially when the sun shines on its nine superb steeples with golden bulbs. This Orthodox church offers an atypical image in the Geneva urban landscape. In 1847, the new Constitution of Geneva advocated freedom of worship and religious tolerance. From then on, the authorities allocated land - corresponding to the line of the old fortifications - to the various religious denominations to build places of worship. A Catholic church, an Anglican church, a Masonic temple, a synagogue... Finally, in 1866, the Russian Orthodox Church was built, with an architecture inspired by Byzantine art and by the Moscow style of the 16th-18th centuries. Thanks to the financial contribution of the Russian diaspora, the community grew with the arrival of members of the imperial family, aristocrats, high-ranking officials, engineers and tourists who came to take the waters in the thermal spas, many students and finally revolutionaries. From 1917, after the Bolshevik revolution, the emigration of Russians to Geneva intensified. The church then represented a very strong link - and the only one - between the new residents and their former mother country. Today, there are 200,000 Orthodox believers in Switzerland and about a thousand in Geneva. This church is reputed to be more independent and more free of expression than the one in Chêne-Bougeries, under the direct authority of the Patriarch of Moscow. A church which deserves a small visit.
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