Coordinates: 59°52′50″N 29°55′51″E / 59.88056°N 29.93083°E / 59.88056; 29.93083
Gothic Chapel in Peterhof is an Orthodox church in the name of Saint Alexander Nevsky situated in the Alexandria Park of Petergof, Russia. It was designed at the request of Nicholas I of Russia by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Gothic Revival style in 1829 and consecrated in July 1834. Prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917 this Gothic structure functioned as the private family church of the House of Romanov.
The church, complementing the Alexandria Park Cottage, a summer residence built by Adam Menelaws in 1826–1829, was erected in 1831–1834 under direction of Adam Menelaws and Ludwig Charlemagne. The sculptor Vasily Demut-Malinovsky designed 43 copper figures lining the walls. The iconostasis was designed and painted by Timophey Neff. Later, in 1860s, the church acquired copies of paintings by the same artist; it housed numerous icons donated by the Romanovs. Most of this art perished in World War II; the interior was not restored until 1998.
During the reburial of Empress Maria Fyodorovna in September 2006, her coffin was brought to the chapel which served as her home church during the reign of Alexander III. A funeral service was held in the church on September 27.
Famous quotes containing the words gothic and/or chapel:
“The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;”
—William Blake (1757–1827)