Chapel
A memorial chapel commemorating the imperial family.
The chapel was raised in 1882 to commemorate the survival of Emperor Alexander II from the 1879 attempt on his life by Narodnaya Volya revolutionaries. A miniature structure in the Byzantine-Russian Revival style — onion dome, kokoshnik gables over the windows, a carved stone band running below the cornice — it stood on the corner of Cathedral Square beside the bell tower of the Uspenskyy Cathedral. It served as a spiritual monument to its era: weekly prayers were held here for the Tsar's health, and on the May processions it was one of the stations along the clergy's route.
Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries the square around the Aleksandrivska Chapel became the ritual heart of Kharkiv: coronations, jubilees and patronal feasts gathered here, and evenings were lit by gas lamps and the windows of the photo studios and cafés that ringed the place. In the revolutionary year of 1905, with strikes rocking the Empire, prayers were said at the chapel for the calming of passions; during the First World War, for the soldiers at the front. Small as it was, the chapel always read as the punctuation mark on Cathedral Square — the point that held the rhythm of the whole centre.
When the Soviets relocated the capital of the Ukrainian SSR to Kharkiv in 1919, they began reshaping the centre to match their ideological vision. In 1929—1930, at the peak of the anti-religious campaign, the chapel was demolished along with many other sacred structures in Kharkiv — churches, monasteries, wayside crosses. The move of the capital to Kyiv in 1934 stripped the centre of attention, and the Second World War finished off the surrounding fabric. Not a trace of the chapel remains on Cathedral Square, and no reconstruction has ever been proposed.
