Russian Compound
The Russian Compound (
The Russian Compound covers 68 dunams (17 acres) between Jaffa Road, Shivtei Israel Street, and the Street of the Prophets. After 1890 it was closed by a gated wall, thus the name "compound", but it has long since been a freely accessible central-town district. In October 2008, the Israeli government agreed to transfer ownership of Sergei's Courtyard, one of the main buildings inside the complex, to the Russian government.[3]
History
A Turkish cavalry parade ground during
The compound's construction from 1860 to 1864 was initiated by the
The Israeli Administrator General
Ottoman era
Soon after their conversion to Christianity, the people of Russia began performing pilgrimages to the Holy Land. By the 19th century, thousands of pilgrims flocked annually to the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land, mainly at Easter. In 1911, over 10,000 Russian made the pilgrimage for Easter.[5] The Russian Orthodox Church sent more pilgrims to the Holy Land than any other denomination. Some even made the pilgrimage from Russia on foot.
The Russian Compound had begun to develop in the early 19th century with the opening of the first hospital for pilgrims outside of the Old City walls.[dubious ] It hosted a market where local peddlers could sell their wares and services to pilgrims. In 1847 the first Russian Ecclesiastical Mission was sent to Jerusalem, which, in 1857, was officially inaugurated[where?] with the recognition from the Sultan of Turkey. Its purpose was to offer Russian pilgrims spiritual supervision, provide assistance, and sponsor charitable and educational work among the Orthodox Arab population of Palestine and Syria.[citation needed]
In 1858, the entire area of the Compound was sold to the
Between 1860 and 1864 the Marianskaya Women's Hospice was built on the northeast, and the Russian consulate on the southeast side; to the southwest was a hospital, and in a separate building the residence of the Russian Orthodox religious mission with apartments for the archimandrite, the priests and well-to-do pilgrims; to the northwest stood the large Elizabeth Men's Hospice with altogether 2,000 beds.[dubious ][citation needed] Sometimes tents had to be erected to accommodate the huge crowds of pilgrims. Finally the Holy Trinity Cathedral was built in 1872 as the centrepiece of the Compound.
The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, based in
In 1889 the Sergej Imperial Hospice was completed by the Jerusalem-based George Franghia,[6][7][8] head engineer of the province at the time,[9] an additional accommodation with 25 luxuriously furnished rooms for "rich and honourable guests", on a 9 acres (36,000 m2) plot of land to the northeast of and adjacent to the actual compound.[citation needed] It was commissioned by Grand Duke Sergei (1857–1905),[citation needed] brother to Czar Alexander III, and then President of the Orthodox Palestine Society (Pravoslavnoje Palestinskoje Obshchestvo).[10] The splendid building was made entirely out of hewn stone and was referred to as "one of the most marvellous buildings in the city" by the newspapers.[citation needed]
World War I stopped everything. All priests and the entire staff of the Mission were expelled from Palestine as enemy aliens and all the churches were closed. Turkish soldiers occupied the Russian Compound. With the rise of communist rule in the Soviet Union, the stream of Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem ceased almost entirely. The October Revolution had a major impact on everyday life in Jerusalem. It halted not only the flow of pilgrims, but also the money to maintain the Compound. Most of the buildings were rented to the British authorities.
British Mandate
In 1917, towards the end of
The compound was made one of the bases for the British Mandate in Jerusalem, and became a centre of government administration. All local nationals, most of them Jews, were ordered to abandon their shops and offices. The Russian buildings were converted into government offices. They housed police headquarters and courthouses as well as the Immigration Office.
The women's hospice was converted into the central prison of Jerusalem in response to the Jewish underground, comprising groups like the
In 1931 the British authorities requested that the chief
After the end of the Second World War, during
As British control over the political situation in Mandatory Palestine steadily weakened, harsher measures were enacted. The British finally decided to begin executing Jewish underground prisoners. In 1947, two condemned Jews, Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani, blew themselves up in the night before their execution with a hand grenade which had been smuggled into the cell inside of an orange.
Immediately after the last British soldiers had left Jerusalem in 1948, underground fighters of the
On May 15, 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war, the compound was captured by the Haganah with the assistance of the Etzel and Lehi in a campaign known as Operation Kilshon.
State of Israel
In 1948, after the
For many years the Russian Compound was a centre of Jerusalem nightlife, featuring pubs with names like Glasnost, Cannabis and Putin. The municipality has recently closed the "pub district" in the neighbourhood of the restaurants and bars of
The creation of a new campus for the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, opened in 2023, was central for this rehabilitation. In 2006, an international architects competition was declared open for design of the future campus which is expected to promote interaction between the students and the surrounding heart of urban life on the line separating east from west in Jerusalem, bringing a student and bohemian population to the city center, and constituting an unusual challenge for designers.
In October 2008 the Israeli government agreed to transfer Sergei's Courtyard to Russia, which had originally also been a part of the Russian compound and which had been housing offices of Israel's Agriculture Ministry and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. The government departments housed there were relocated in March 2011. [3]
In 2023 the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design relocated most of its 3,000+ faculty and students to a brand new, 460,000 sq ft SANAA-designed building adjacent to the compound.[12][13]
Buildings
Holy Trinity Cathedral
The Holy Trinity Cathedral was built as the center of the Russian Compound with funds donated by the people of the Russian Empire. Construction began in 1860, the edifice was consecrated in 1872. The surface of its interior main hall, dome, and two aisles is painted celestial blue with salmon accents and include numerous depictions of saints. The church has four octagonal bell towers. The cathedral is considered to be one of Jerusalem's more distinctive churches.
Sergei Courtyard
The Sergei Courtyard, at the corner of Heleni HaMalka and Monbaz Street, is a courtyard structure with a
Duhovnia
The long building lies south of the cathedral towards the new city hall. Built in 1863 as a hospice, it also hosted the offices of the ecclesiastical mission of the Russian patriarchate, named Duhovnia. It has a courtyard structure with a church (St Alexandra) in the center. The building housed all of Jerusalem's courts, including the Israeli Supreme Court, until 1992. The building is now used only for lower courts and the magistrate court. The Russian Mission used to use the building; presently it still has an office in the back of the building, however its center is now on the Mount of Olives, directly east of the compound.
Southern Gate
The Southern Gate, between the mission and the hospital on Safra Square, was built in 1890 as part of the perimeter wall of the Russian Compound. It was moved from its original location about 50 metres (160 ft) south of where it now stands as part of the Safra Square Project and the new City hall.
Hospital
13 Safra Square
Russian Consulate
The
Elisabeth Courtyard hospice for men
A courtyard structure built in 1864 as a hostel able to accommodate about 300 pilgrims is located on today's Monbaz Street. Above the Neoclassical entrance is an inscription marking it as "Elisbeth Courtyard" and the emblem of the Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society. It houses now the police headquarters.
Northern Gate
The Northern Gate is opposite the Sergei Building. Around the compound was a perimeter wall with two formal gates at north and south, built in 1890. Only one of the two northern gatehouses has survived. The other was pulled down in the 1970s. On the façade is the emblem of the Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society.
Marianskaya Courtyard hospice for women
The hostel for Russian women pilgrims, at 1 Misheol Hagvurah Street, was built in 1864 in the Neoclassical style. At the front of the building one can see a Russian inscription that translates as "Marianskaya women's hospice" and the symbol of the Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society above the entrance. With long hallways leading to separate rooms, it was an ideal layout for a hostel, or a prison, as used by the British during their mandate in Palestine.
Over the course of the British occupation, hundreds of prisoners, both simple criminals and political, passed through its gates. Jews and Arabs were incarcerated together. Executions for capital crimes were commonplace, but only for Arabs. While the facility housed many death-row inmates captured from Jewish underground organizations, Jews sentenced to death were sent to Acre prison for the actual executions. The British, fearful of the Jewish reaction to executions in the Holy City, never used the gallows of the prison for Jews. Prisoners from the Jewish underground organizations were often put to work making coffins and gravestones for the very same British policemen and soldiers they had killed. As the guards used to tell them, "What you start on the outside, you finish on the inside." The building now houses the Underground Prisoners Museum. The barbed wire fence, bars and inscription "Central Prison Jerusalem" on the door are from the British Mandatory period.
Nikolai Courtyard – Pilgrims Hospice
In 1903 another hospice for Russian pilgrims was built, the Nikolai Pilgrims Hospice, named for Tsar
Archaeology
In front of the police headquarters on Shneor Cheshin Street is a colossal monolithic column dating either from the Second Temple or the Byzantine period. The column was discovered in 1871. In ancient times there was a quarry here, and a relic of it is still to be seen in the form of that column fully 12 m (39 ft) long which broke while it was being quarried and was left in situ, still embedded in the natural rock. The column was presumably destined either for the colonnades of the Herodian Temple or - as a number of capitals found here suggest - for a building of the Theodosian period (second half of the 4th century). It is popularly known as the "Finger of Og".
Recent archaeological excavations suggest that Jerusalem's ancient "Third Wall," built by
See also
- Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia
- Church of Mary Magdalene
- Russians in Israel
- Moscovia Detention Centre
References
- ISBN 0-8143-2909-8.complex. These complexes were all built by foreigners, with funds from abroad, as semi-autonomous compounds encompassed by walls and with gates that were closed at night. Their appearance was European, and they stood out against the Middle-Eastern-style buildings of Palestine.
The beginning of construction outside the Jerusalem Old City in the mid-19th century was linked to the changing relations between the Ottoman government and the European powers. After the Crimean War, various rights and privileges were extended to non-Muslims who now enjoyed greater tolerance and more security of life and property. All of this directly influenced the expansion of Jerusalem beyond the city walls. From the mid-1850s to the early 1860s, several new buildings rose outside the walls, among them the mission house of the English consul, James Finn, in what came to be known as Abraham's Vineyard (Kerem Avraham), the Protestant school built by Bishop Samuel Gobat on Mount Zion; the Russian Compound; the Mishkenot Sha'ananim houses: and the Schneller Orphanage
- ^ "The New Building Revolutionizing Jerusalem". Haaretz. Retrieved 2023-12-17.
- ^ a b c "Israel vacates Sergei courtyard ahead of Netanyahu's Moscow visit this week". Haaretz.
- ^ Jerusalem: Architecture in the late Ottoman Period
- ^ "The Russians in Jerusalem". Parallel Histories. Retrieved 2019-10-25.
- ISBN 978-961-6182-86-7. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
- ^ a b "Russian Representation Church in Jerusalem to Reopen after Years of Restoration". OrthoChristian.com. 18 July 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
- ^ "Virtual tour "Church of Saint Alexander Nevskiy", Jerusalem". Vela De Jerusalen. 12 October 2017. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- S2CID 201369914. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ^ Segev, Tom (9 October 2008). "Portrait of a Duke". Haaretz. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-87306-879-6. p. 437.
- ^ "The New Campus". Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Retrieved 2023-12-17.
- ^ "Bezalel opens the semester at the new campus: The President of the Academy addresses the celebration alongside recent events in the country". Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Retrieved 2023-12-17.
- ^ "Post boxes and Power in Jerusalem". Parallel Histories. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
- ^ Gannon, Megan (October 23, 2016). "Scientists locate site where ancient Roman armies breached Jerusalem walls". Live Science Contributor. Live Science. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
Further reading
- Ely Schiller (ed.): The Heritage of the Holy Land. A rare collection of photographs from the Russian Compound 1905-1910, Arie Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1982
- David Kroyanker (ed.): The Russian Compound: Toward the Year 2000. From Russian Pilgrimage Center to a Focus of Urban Activity The Jerusalem Municipality, 1997
- David Kroyanker: Jerusalem Architecture (p. 132-135, The Russians). (Introduction by Teddy Kollek), Keter Publishing House Ltd., 1994, 2002
- Yehoshua Ben-Arieh: Jerusalem in the 19th century. Emergence of the New City, St Martin's Press New York/Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Jerusalem, 1986
- S. Graham: With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem, London 1914
- Aviva Bar-Am: Return to Bevingrad, Jerusalem Post (Magazine), September 19, 2003