Very beautiful active Russian Orthodox Christian church built to commemorate victory over Turkish forces in Chesme Bay. The official church name is Church of Saint John the Baptist at Chesme Palace.
The Chesma Church is located pretty far from the regular tourist places, between the Moskovskaya and Park Pobedi (Victory Park) subway stations, in a middle of residential neighborhood.
During the Soviet era the church was a part of Naval museum dedicated to the Chesme Battle. It contained many paintings about the battle, items from the ships and the crew, flags and a large exposition - very realistic model of ships (close to true size) in the middle of the battle, lighted, positioned and painted in such a way that one can literally smell the powder smoke and hear the battle sounds.
One interesting thing about the Chesme Battle is that it was lead from the Russian side by my direct relative - admiral Fedot Klokachev, on a battleship 'Evropa'.
Read more about the battle in Chesme Bay at wikipedia.org
Read more about Chesme Church at wikipedia.org.
At the time of the photo the building of the University is being repainted.
On the other side there is a Sports Center Volna (Wave). Many of the sport centers were built at Soviet time to let kids train in different sports outside of the school have they (or their parents) expressed such a desire. Each a center is equipped with an outdoor stadium and indoor facilities for various sports - light athletics, heavy athletics, martial arts, soccer, tennis, etc
On the left side of the church there is a long term defense point - a type of fortifications built at times of World War 2 all across the city to defend against German and Finnish forces.
Built of steel and concrete, equipped with machine guns, those defense points protected soldiers against direct artillery fire and were very effective against infantry / lightly armored vehicles.
As seen on the photographs, the fortifications are sealed at the our days.
Read more about the Siege of Leningrad at wikipedia.org.
On the back side of the church, there is a hospital and a cemetery.
The monument in front of the cemetery is for people died for Russia during:
- 1812 war against Napoleon
- Wars against Turkey (1828-1829, 1877-1878)
- Crimea war (1853-1855)
- War against Japan (1904-1905)
- World War 1 (1914-1918)
- World War 2 (1941-1945)
K. K., 5 Jul 2010