Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ in Riga

At the end of the 19th century, the Riga Orthodox community needed a more spacious church, so Archbishop of Riga and Mitava (Jelgava) Benjamin Karelin asked people to collect donations for the construction of a new cathedral; this intention was also supported by the governor-general of the Baltic region, prince Peter Bagration, at whose request the Riga diocese was soon allocated 900,000 rubles.

According to the results of the competition, the project of the architect R. Pflug was chosen, since the designed temple reminded of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
At the final stage of construction work, the Russian Emperor Alexander III presented 12 bells, which were cast by a master from Moscow, Xenophon Verevkin, the largest of the bells weighed about 12800 kg and was named in honor of Alexander Nevsky.

The interior of the church was luxurious, it contained a collection of old and expensive icons, three iconostases were painted by the outstanding Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin; the walls were decorated with frescoes in the Byzantine style with ancient Christian ornaments.

The 20th century was very turbulent and destructive in the history of the temple. During the First World War, the church was plundered, church property was evacuated to Yuryev (Tartu), the bells were taken to Nizhny Novgorod (the largest one to Pavlov).

The Second World War brought new destruction, but the temple was rebuilt after the war. The worst period was the so-called "Khrushchev period", when the crosses were cut down in the cathedral in 1960, the bells were removed and melted down; and then, according to the project of J. Kalnberz, the church was rebuilt into a planetarium - the so-called House of Knowledge. In one of the side altar rooms a cafe was opened, popularly known as "God's Ears".

After the restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991, V. Feldmanis from Riga presented the church with new shiny gilded crosses made in Würzburg, Germany. In the 90s, restoration work began in the temple and the restoration of wall paintings. Also, 12 icons from the stocks of the Latvian National Museum of Art and Rundale Castle have returned to the temple.