Skywatch Friday: Bucharest Cathedral
August has been a crazy month dominated by our travels to Europe. This time we chose to go to Eastern Europe because we'd never visited these former Eastern Block countries. The starting point was Bucharest, Romania.
After a long day's travel we made it to our hotel. Much to our delight across the street was this magnificent building. It was closed by the time we arrived, but we took a walk after dinner to look through the gates and grab some pics. It's the National Cathedral of Romania and is also known as the People's Salvation Cathedral. It is tallest (410 ft.) and largest Christian Eastern Orthodox Cathedral by volume and area in the world. It can hold up to 5,000 people in the nave and 23,000 on the esplanade.
This smaller building in front of the cathedral is the Ascension of the Lord Chapel built in 2011 as a place to worship while the cathedral was being built. As we were standing there looking through the gate someone opened the door and it looked like the chapel was filled with gold. I wish we would have arrived earlier so we could toured both the chapel and cathedral.
The idea for this church started in the late 1800s. A cross was raised on the site in 1929, but lack of funding caused it to be abandoned. Two world wars and and communist rule also delayed construction. In 1999 a cross was sanctified as the future building site of the cathedral.
In 2009, the architectural design of the building was selected and construction began in 2010. It cost about $315 million dollars to construct the cathedral most of which came from public funding. Our tour guide the next day told us how the citizens of Romania did not support their tax money going towards this project because those funds could have been better used elsewhere.
The cathedral was officially consecrated and opened on October 26, 2025, but we could see construction is still ongoing. The tour guide also told us that Romania is one of the most devout European countries with about 85% of the population identifying as Christian Orthodox.
Usually when we travel to Europe we see structures that are hundreds if not a thousand years old. It was somewhat shocking to see such a new cathedral in a medieval city. If you're ever in Bucharest I highly recommend visiting this enormous cathedral. I'm sure the inside is a sight to behold too.
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