Onion Domes To Rise In Paris
The Sunday Times
June 6, 2010
Matthew Campbell
RUSSIA has pulled off a spectacular coup by winning permission from President Nicolas Sarkozy to build an Orthodox cathedral next to the Eiffel Tower.
According to sources, the Russian government has paid about £60m for a site where it will build a gilded cathedral with “onion” domes like St Basil’s in Red Square, Moscow.
The building will dramatically alter the fabled Paris skyline. France’s agreement came only after intensive lobbying by Russian officials, including President Dmitry Medvedev, who told Sarkozy how important the cathedral was to him, and Vladimir Putin, the prime minister.
It would be the first Russian Orthodox cathedral built in France since the days of the Romanovs.
Moscow went to extraordinary lengths when the site, headquarters of the French weather service, went on sale last year. It employed a French lobbying firm to get across the message: the Kremlin would consider a sale to anyone else an “unfriendly act”.
The building is expected to be in place by 2013.
It will no doubt highlight divisions in the orthodox flock. Many in France are descendants of white Russians who fled communism after the death of the last tsar and who are opposed to the patriarchy in Moscow because of its links to the Soviet-era KGB.