Monument to Alexander II (Moscow)
The Monument to Alexander II, officially called the Monument to Emperor Alexander II, the Liberator Tsar, is a memorial of Emperor
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Completed in 2005 and partly inspired by a destroyed imperial monument from 1898, the statue itself was paid for by private donations, with the rest of the monument mainly financed by public funding. The site for the new monument was chosen in part because Alexander helped lay the foundation for the original Christ the Savior Cathedral (destroyed in 1931 by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
) and ruled during its construction.
History
The 1898 memorial
The first monument to Alexander II stood above the
Moskva River
until the end of the 1920s.
-
Postcard of the old monument to Alexander II, as seen from Ivanovskaya Square. -
Photo of same. -
Old monument
The 2005 memorial
On June 2, 2004, Moscow Mayor
Alexius II
, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, performed the consecration of the new monument.
Alexander II is probably best known for his
Balkan war against Turkey in the 1870s, during which Russia freed Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire's hegemony.[1]
References
Sources
- Kirychenko, Yevgeniya Ivanovna (1977). Moscow architectural monuments of the 1830–1910s. Moscow.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Monument to Alexander II to be Erected in Moscow, in the Kommersant, June 2, 2004.
- Dmitrieva, Marina (July 2006). "Moscow Architecture between Stalinism and Modernism". International Review of Sociology. 16 (2): 427–450. S2CID 145440120.
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