St. Nicholas' was built in the Liverpool neighbourhood of Toxteth in a period when Liverpool's magnates were filling Toxteth with opulent mansions. The church stands in a neighbourhood of substantial homes and in a cluster of houses of worship designed to advertise the wealth and status of a group of captains of industry that was remarkably ethnically diverse, by the standards of Victorian England. Immediately adjacent to St. Nicholas are the Princes Road Synagogue and an early French gothic, Welsh Presbyterian Church.
The exterior is extremely ornate, featuring arches within arches, done in alternating bands of white stone and red brick. There is a row of three domes on the portico, and a fourth dome over the nave, all raised on drums. The interior, with white marble columns and Byzantine capitals, is surprisingly plain compared with the exterior.
Images of the interior
Nave as seen from the balcony
View of the roof and central dome
Pulpit, halfway up the wall of the north aisle
Central portion of the iconostasis or screen, showing the Beautiful Doors
Cathedrals, collegiate churches, and monastic churches like those of abbeys and priories, often have certain complex structural forms that are found less often in parish churches. They also tend to display a higher level of contemporary architectural style and the work of accomplished craftsmen, and occupy a status both ecclesiastical and social that an ordinary parish church rarely has. Such churches are generally among the finest buildings locally and a source of regional pride. Many are among the world's most renowned works of architecture. These include St Peter's Basilica, Notre-Dame de Paris, Cologne Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Antwerp Cathedral, Prague Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of San Vitale, St Mark's Basilica, Westminster Abbey, Saint Basil's Cathedral, Antoni Gaudí's incomplete Sagrada Família and the ancient cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, now a mosque.
In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church. Iconostasis also refers to a portable icon stand that can be placed anywhere within a church. The iconostasis evolved from the Byzantine templon, a process complete by the 15th century.
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire, usually dated from 330 AD, when Constantine the Great established a new Roman capital in Byzantium, which became Constantinople, until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. There was initially no hard line between the Byzantine and Roman Empires, and early Byzantine architecture is stylistically and structurally indistinguishable from late Roman architecture. The style continued to be based on arches, vaults and domes, often on a large scale. Wall mosaics with gold backgrounds became standard for the grandest buildings, with frescos a cheaper alternative.
A templon is a feature of Byzantine churches consisting of a barrier separating the nave from the sanctuary near the altar.
Princes Road Synagogue is a synagogue on Princes Road in the Toxteth district of Liverpool, England. It is the home of the Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation. It was founded in the late 1860s, designed by William James Audsley and George Ashdown Audsley, and consecrated on 2 September 1874. It is widely regarded as the finest example of the Moorish Revival style of synagogue architecture in the UK, and synagogues emulating its design can be found as far away as Sydney.
Neo-Byzantine architecture was a revival movement, most frequently seen in religious, institutional and public buildings. It incorporates elements of the Byzantine style associated with Eastern and Orthodox Christian architecture dating from the 5th through 11th centuries, notably that of Constantinople and the Exarchate of Ravenna.
The Palatine Chapel is the royal chapel of the Norman Palace in Palermo, Sicily. This building is a mixture of Byzantine, Norman and Fatimid architectural styles, showing the tricultural state of Sicily during the 12th century after Roger I and Robert Guiscard conquered the island.
The Church of St. Mary of the Admiral, also called Martorana, is the seat of the Parish of San Nicolò dei Greci, overlooking the Piazza Bellini, next to the Norman church of San Cataldo, and facing the Baroque church of Santa Caterina in Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy.
The Little Hagia Sophia mosque, formerly the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, is a former Greek Orthodox church dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, built between 532 and 536, and converted into a mosque during the Ottoman Empire.
Eastern Orthodox church architecture constitutes a distinct, recognizable family of styles among church architectures. These styles share a cluster of fundamental similarities, having been influenced by the common legacy of Byzantine architecture from the Eastern Roman Empire. Some of the styles have become associated with the particular traditions of one specific autocephalous Eastern Orthodox patriarchate, whereas others are more widely used within the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Pammakaristos Church, also known as the Church of Theotokos Pammakaristos, is one of the most famous Byzantine churches in Istanbul, Turkey, and was the last pre-Ottoman building to house the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Converted in 1591 into the Fethiye Mosque, it is today partly a museum housed in a side chapel or parekklesion. One of the most important examples of Constantinople's Palaiologan architecture, the church contains the largest quantity of Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul after the Hagia Sophia and Chora Church.
Kalenderhane Mosque is a former Eastern Orthodox church in Istanbul, converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. With high probability the church was originally dedicated to the Theotokos Kyriotissa. The building is sometimes referred to as Kalender Haneh Jamissi and St. Mary Diaconissa. This building represents one among the few extant examples of a Byzantine church with domed Greek cross plan.
Bodrum Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, is a former Eastern Orthodox church converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. The church was known under the Greek name of Myrelaion.
St. Michael's Cathedral is a cathedral of the Orthodox Church in America Diocese of Alaska, at Lincoln and Maksoutoff Streets in Sitka, Alaska. The earliest Orthodox cathedral in the New World, it was built in the nineteenth century, when Alaska was under the control of Russia, though this structure burned down in 1966. After 1872, the cathedral came under the control of the Diocese of Alaska. It had been a National Historic Landmark since 1962, notable as an important legacy of Russian influence in North America and Southeast Alaska in particular.
The architecture of Liverpool is rooted in the city's development into a major port of the British Empire. It encompasses a variety of architectural styles of the past 300 years, while next to nothing remains of its medieval structures which would have dated back as far as the 13th century. Erected 1716–18, Bluecoat Chambers is supposed to be the oldest surviving building in central Liverpool.
Princes Road is a street in Toxteth, Liverpool, England. It runs from a traffic circle at the northern extremity of Princes Park where Croxteth, Devonshire, and Kingsley Roads join, northwest about one kilometre to Upper Parliament Street. It is paralleled along most of its length by Princes Avenue, with a tree-lined strip between them, where there were formerly tram rails.
St. Nicholas Church is an ancient East Roman basilica church in the ancient city of Myra, now a museum located in modern Demre, Antalya Province, Turkey. It was built above the burial place of St Nicholas, a 4th-century Christian bishop of Myra, an important religious figure for Eastern Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics and the historical inspiration for Santa Claus. Its use dated from its 6th century construction for the state church of the Roman Empire by Justinian the Great. The basilica is on UNESCO's tentative list to become a World Heritage Site.
Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral located at 419 South Dithridge Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was designed by architect Thomas Hannah and built in 1904. The First Congregational Church built the structure and used it until 1921, but it has been a Greek Orthodox Church since 1923. Currently, it is part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and seat of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh. This Classical Revival style church building was added to the List of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks in 1982.
Bedesten or Bedestan is a historical building in the Selimiye quarter of North Nicosia, North Cyprus, located directly beside the Selimiye Mosque. The structure has a long and complicated history spanning more than one thousand years. Originally built as a church in about the sixth century, and expanded and rebuilt between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, dedicated to Saint Nicholas, it was converted to a bedesten, a type of covered market, during the period of Ottoman rule. It is currently used as a cultural centre.
The Moldavian vault is an architectural element of religious architecture used from the 15th to the 17th century in Moldavia. It is an arched suspension system on pendentives. It was mostly located above the naos or the main nave of the temple. The vault creates a transition from a square plane to a circular plane leading to a dome or tholobate tower. Consists of four diagonal arches over which pendentives transform square the circle. Four smaller segment arches in turn transform the circle into a square. Gradually they rise above the nave and crown the dome or tholobate tower. The vault allows a significant reduction in the diameter and weight of the tholobate, the dome and the tower itself.
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