Russian craftsmen have completed work on the mosaic of the main Serbian cathedral
Professionals from the Russian Academy of Arts, under the leadership of academician Nikolai Mukhin, completed the installation of 15 thousand square meters of interior mosaic decoration of the Cathedral of St. Sava in Belgrade.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to visit the cathedral on October 29.
As a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, work on the mosaic decoration of the cathedral took four years.
“The church is currently completing work on the iconostasis, on top of which an icon of the Holy Trinity will soon be installed, and laying the floor will begin tomorrow, since scaffolding was installed during the mosaic work,” the future rector of the cathedral, Bishop of Remesia and Vicar of the Patriarch of Serbia Stefan. “This year we plan to complete all the work in the Cathedral of St. Sava.”
According to available information, the mosaic weighs more than 320 tons and contains more than 50 million pieces; 300 mosaic masters worked on it, and together with all the personnel involved, a team of 600 people.
“They say that it is similar to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, but we have information that this is a more serious work than the mosaics made in Hagia Sophia,” says Bishop Stephen.
The cathedral in Belgrade, dedicated to the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Saint Archbishop Sava of Serbia, was founded in 1894 on the site of the burning of the saint’s relics by the Turkish authorities in 1594. Construction continued throughout the last century with significant interruptions.
The beginning of the active phase of construction of the cathedral dates back to 1935, however, it was interrupted by the Second World War and the communist Yugoslav period and resumed only in 1985. The author of the current project in the Serbian-Byzantine style is the famous Serbian and Yugoslav architect Alexander Deroko. By 2004, all work on the construction of the cathedral was completed. Then we began to decorate the interior of the temple.
Since 2015, on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rossotrudnichestvo has been the general coordinator of the work on decorating the interior of the temple.
The Church of St. Sava the Serbian is one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world with a floor area of 3650 square meters and a height with a cross of 79 meters, it can accommodate 10 thousand people.
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