Catedral Ortodoxa Rusa de Santa María Magdalena

An Orthodox icon vanished from Madrid in the eighteen-eighties, sailed to Argentina, and didn't return until twenty-thirteen when this cathedral was built. When Russia's embassy chapel on this very site closed at the end of the nineteenth century, its most precious possession—an icon dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalena—was packed up and shipped with other Russian émigrés heading to Rosario, Argentina. More than a hundred years later, the Orthodox community of Madrid tracked it down in that distant church, brought it home, and placed it right here on the cathedral's right wall, just as these five golden domes were being completed. Step inside and you'll notice something that stops many visitors cold: the icon hangs in Western academic style, painted exactly how Tsar Peter the Great preferred his religious art. The architects—a Russian and a Spaniard working together—filled this neobyzantine interior with intricate murals, lamps shaped like visigothic crowns from ancient Spain, and a carved stone iconostasis that wasn't installed until twenty-fifteen. The journey of an object brought this building to life.