The Russian Church, Bad Homburg

Bad Homburg’s popularity with late 19th-century European Royalty included the Russian Royal Family, as well as a great deal of their nobility. This led to demands for a small Russian Orthodox church to provide them with a place of worship, which found a champion in the Russian Privy Councillor Proworoff, widely known in Bad Homburg as the "Rosenkavalier", due to his habit of walking around with a handful of roses, which he distributed to the ladies he encountered along his way.

Proworoff arranged the financing for the building, and plans were drawn up by the Saint Petersburg architect Professor Louis Benois. Czar Nicholas II laid the cornerstone himself in a lavish ceremony in October 1896, accompanied by his wife, Benois and Kaiserin Friedrich.

Completed three years later, the church is a small but classic example of a Russian church, complete with decorated external weatherboards and a gilded onion dome. The interior could not have held more than a dozen or so of the nobility, but is appropriately lavish in its decoration, with an iconostasis in silver and gilt.

It is attractively located in wooded surroundings on the edge of the Kurpark, a few minutes’ walk from the main railway station.