Lead architect in Yekaterinburg excludes square defended in mass protests from list of possible sites for cathedral construction

Andrey Molokov, the lead architect for the city of Yekaterinburg, has created a list of five potential locations for a planned cathedral to honor the city’s patron saint. Previous plans to build the cathedral on a popular public square triggered widely publicized mass protests.

According to Interfax, the architect’s list did not include the square in front of Yekaterinburg’s Drama Theater, where thousands of the city’s residents demonstrated in hopes of preserving what they said is one of the few green spaces left in the city’s downtown. Vice Mayor Alexander Kovalchik said both the local Orthodox eparchy and the cathedral’s investors had asked for it to be built elsewhere.