Grebenshikov’s Old Believers Preaching House

In the district of Riga not so much attractive to most tourists there is one more place worth seeing. With its 27 000 members it is the biggest Old Believers preaching house in the world - Grebenshikov’s Old Believers church.

Old Believers became separated from the official Russian Orthodox Church after 1666-1667 as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon. Their liturgical practices are the same as the Russian Orthodox Church maintained before these reforms.

At the time of reforms many of splitters from the Russian Orthodox Church had to run away from the persecution, they mostly found their shelter in the northern Russia, and also in Latvia which then was partially Polish and Swedish.

The church is named after a rich merchant who supported it for a good while. It is also the only church in Latvia that has a golden dome.

View famouslatvia.com in a larger map

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.