Russian Cemetery of Caucade in Nice

Brief Information

The Russian Cemetery of Caucade appeared not simply as a new burial place, but as the transfer of Russian memory into a separate space. In 1866, the Russian consulate and the Church of Nicholas and Alexandra bought a plot on the outskirts of Nice; the remains of compatriots buried elsewhere were moved here. Before that, Russians were buried in the city cemetery of Château, while the poor were placed in a common grave.

Opened in 1867, the cemetery was named Nikolaevsky in memory of Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, who died in Nice. For this reason, the center of the site is connected not only with burials, but also with a specific act of remembrance: the chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker stands as the cemetery’s focal point of meaning. Today it is one of the largest Russian cemeteries in France, where Russian subjects and emigrants are buried.

What to Notice First

It makes sense to look at the cemetery as a space where memory is gathered around a center. At the center stands the chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the heavenly patron of Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich; later, in the 1920s, it was expanded to the size of a small church. This change matters: a small memorial chapel became a place capable of holding a broader communal memory.

The interior details are also connected with different layers of this memory: the iconostasis was donated in 1911, and a marble plaque preserves the names of officers of the Russian Imperial Army who died in Nice between 1921 and 1954. Outside, the same principle is continued by marble tombstones bearing the surnames Gagarin, Obolensky, Tsereteli, and Volkonsky. Even the nearby defensive structures received the name La batterie Russe because of the cemetery’s proximity: the place influenced the language of the surrounding space.