Built between 1876 and 1883, the Nativity of Christ Cathedral is the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the Baltics. Every day of the week one will find large numbers of Riga's almost 45% of Russian speakers under its arches, lighting the traditional long Eastern Orthodox candles. Its Neo-Byzantine exterior is matched on the inside with icons traditional of Orthodox cathedrals, some of which are painted by Vasili Vereshchagin. During Soviet times, the cathedral was turned into a planetarium, but apparently religion has trumped science in this debate, and the cathedral has returned to its original function.
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