I'm so happy to introduce you something really fantastic and beautiful, being created in modern Russia in our days! It is so rarely in a country, where every serious project becomes as usual a project to steal money and corruption.
But this new church of the Protection of the Virgin in Moscow is something special! It is being built with so much artistic taste, knowledge and with so much love!
This grand building is funded only by donations, not a single ruble is from the budget or from a large company. 635,000 people and thousands of small firms have become donators of this beautiful church.
2.5 thousand. sq. meters of walls are lined with Byzantine mosaics. Grandiose work goes sixth year and is nearing to its end. 50 artists are working on this project. Mosaics are done of smalt, marble, onyx.
Incredibly beautiful church! I would like to share my admiration and would like to hope for a good future of this country (if such beautiful churches are being built, may be good times will finally be in our unhappy Russia?) "Look! If the stars are illumined nightly, then somebody's out there that needs it" (V.Mayakovsky)

http://hrampokrov.ru/virtour/vtupper/

http://hrampokrov.ru/

WOW !!

Ochen' krasivaia! Kak tserkov' dol'zhno byt'!

Beautiful with great depth, mystical, colourful, pointing to God . . .

And that's just describing our Nataly!

The Church is wonderful too!

Alex

The Pantocrator looks like the one in Cefalu, Sicily. That image along with the Theotokos and archangels has been adapted to an icon and is available from Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, MA. If you do not want to support them, the same thing is available from ROCOR's Archangel Books.
I like the image very much, though some may quibble that the Pantocrator belongs in the dome and not the apse...meh!

the mosaics are very beautiful. the shape is rather interesting - the tall shape reminds me more of Serbian and Slavo-Byzantine church buildings than Byzantine ones, which is interesting considering the mosaics try to be very classically Byzantine.

Yes, right. The prototype is the apse in the cathedral of Cefalu.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/74677420

Private funding of a Russian church dedicated to Pokrov in these troubled times is such a powerful symbol. Is there a way to support the project available to westerners?

I guess so. It is written in the Internet site of the chirch, that now they collect money for the mosaic depiction of the Mother of God on the WESTERN entry of the church. http://hrampokrov.ru/ It is providentially! So you can pay with your card on this page http://hrampokrov.ru/temple/projects/mosaic/mosaic1.php

So very beautiful! Thank you, Nataly for sharing this.

Beautiful church!

Do new churches like this in Russia need government approval to be built? Who makes the decision on when and where to build a new church? Does this mean the faith is increasing in this locality?

Oy!