Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Nice

The St Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral, Nice ( Cathédrale Orthodoxe Saint-Nicolas de Nice ) is a Christian Orthodox cathedral, and a national monument of France, located in the city of Nice. Opened in 1912, thanks to the generosity of Russia 's Tsar Nicholas II, it is the largest Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe. From 1931 until 15th December 2011, the parish that occupied the cathedral was part of the Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe under the jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople. Since the mid-19th century, Russian nobility visited Nice and the French Riviera, following the fashion established decades earlier by the English upper class and nobility.

In 1864, immediately after the railway reached Nice, Tsar Alexander II visited by train and was attracted by the pleasant climate. Thus began an association between Russians and the French Riviera that continues to this day. The cathedral, consecrated in December 1912 in memory of Nicholas Alexandrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, who died in Nice, was meant to serve the large Russian community that had settled in Nice by the end of the 19th century, as well as devout visitors from the Imperial Court. Tsar Nicholas II funded the construction work. On 20 January 2010, a French Court (the Tribunal of First Instance at Nice) adjudged that the title to the Cathedral should be held by the Russian state.

From 2005 till December 2011, there was a protracted ownership and church jurisdictional dispute over the church building as well as control over the parish, between the existing administration of the Exarchate (for legal purposes represented by the "association cultuelle") on the one hand and the RF government on the other. The Russian state, which in 2010 was recognised by the French court as a title-holder, made a decision in 2011 to turn the church building over to the Moscow Patriarchate. The dispute partly stemmed from a conflict between old Russian nobility who have long since settled in Nice and newly arrived Russians. The litigation, however, is not yet over; an appeal to quash the judgments of the lower courts is pending before the Cour de Cassation, the highest civil court in France.