Kazan · RU

A temple of all religions

On the bank of the Kazanka River at the edge of Kazan, the Temple of All Religions (also called the Universal Temple) rises in a riot of coloured domes, minarets, stained glass and mosaic. It is not a house of worship but a single, sprawling artistic statement: a private museum and cultural centre conceived to put the world's faiths under one roof. Begun in the early 1990s by the artist, sculptor and healer Ildar Khanov, the building was his life's work and remains unfinished, its bright silhouette now one of Kazan's most photographed landmarks. Khanov's dream was a complex crowned by sixteen cupolas, one for each of the great world religions, including faiths no longer practised. A Greek Orthodox onion dome sits beside a slender minaret, a synagogue's star glints from the roofline, and statues of angels and the Buddha look out over the yard. What began on his own homestead, financed by his art and by patients he treated for addiction, has become a brand of Tatarstan and a symbol of the city's long tradition of Orthodox Russian and Islamic Tatar cultures living side by side.