Alexander Nevski Square

Alexander Nevski Square, which was designed as part of the monastery’s growth in the late eighteenth century, had earned its name by at least 1784, and was planned out in the 1790s with the construction of the Gate Church and the erection of a stone wall border. In front of the plaza and Nevsky Prospekt, the monastery erected many residential buildings and an almshouse. In the mid-nineteenth century, the alternate name Alexander Nevsky Lavra Square became popular. By the early twentieth century, the plaza had been significantly neglected and decrepit. It was deemed dangerous to go through at night because of the risk of being robbed, and urban tales about ravenous rats proliferated. In the early Soviet era, it was dubbed Red Square, but it was renamed Alexander Nevsky Square in 1952.

With the building of the Alexander Nevsky Bridge, as well as the inauguration of the Hotel Moscow and the metro station Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo in the 1960s, the neighborhood was rebuilt. Another metro station, Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo-2, opened in the 1980s, and in 2002, long-planned plans for an Alexander Nevsky memorial were realized with the installation of a bronze horse sculpture in the plaza.

The foundation stone was set, but the majority of the structure was erected between 1904 and 1912. Alexander Nevsky, a Russian prince, was a saint. The cathedral was built in memory of Russian troops who died during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which resulted in the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman domination.

The cathedral was planned by Alexander Pomerantsev, with assistance from Alexander Smirnov and Alexander Yakovlev, after Pomerantsev drastically altered Ivan Bogomolov’s original 1884-1885 concept. The final design was completed in 1898, and the construction and decoration were completed by a team of Bulgarian, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and other European artists, architects, and workers that included the aforementioned architects, as well as Petko Momchilov, Yordan Milanov, Haralampi Tachev, Ivan Mrkvika, Vasily D. Bolotnov, Nikolay A. Bruni, A.A. Kiselyov, Anton Mitov, and

The marble components and lighting fixtures were designed in Munich, the metal elements for the gates in Berlin, the gates themselves at Karl Bamberg’s foundry in Vienna, and the mosaics were imported from Venice.

As part of a continuous anti-religious effort, the area was renamed Red Square on December 15, 1923. The area was part of the route of the city’s first trolley bus service in 1936. It was renamed Alexander Nevsky Square on December 15, 1952, after the saint rather than the monastery. After the inauguration of the Alexander Nevsky Bridge on 5 November 1965, the neighborhood was renovated, with the removal of older buildings and the construction of the Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo metro station and the Hotel Moscow. Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo-2, a second metro station, built in 1985.