Cathedral of Saint Mary Magdalene, Warsaw

Stand still for a moment on the pavement of Solidarity Avenue. Trams rattle past behind you, and the traffic of the Praga district hums along the wide road. Then lift your eyes. Five domes rise above the trees, dark against the sky, each crowned with a golden cross. The sound of the city stays at your back, but the building in front of you seems to belong to another place. That is because, in a way, it does.

This is the Cathedral of Saint Mary Magdalene. It is the main church of the Polish Orthodox Church, and the seat of its metropolitan, the senior bishop. Most visitors to Warsaw stay on the other bank of the Vistula, among the rebuilt streets of the Old Town. Few cross the river to Praga. If you have made that crossing, you are standing in front of one of the oldest surviving church buildings on this side of the city.

To understand why the cathedral looks the way it does, you need one piece of background. For much of the nineteenth century, Warsaw was ruled by the Russian Empire. Poland had been divided between its neighbours, and this city fell under the control of Saint Petersburg. Russian officials, soldiers and railway workers came to live here. Many of them were Orthodox Christians, not Roman Catholics like most Poles. They needed churches of their own.

The cathedral went up in the late 1860s, close to the railway line that connected Warsaw to Saint Petersburg. The location was practical. Travellers and workers arrived here from the east, and Praga was their first stop in the city. The architect was Nikolai Sychev, and he worked in what is often called the Russo-Byzantine style. That style mixes the forms of medieval Russian churches with older influences from Byzantium, the eastern Christian empire centred on Constantinople.

Look at the shape of the building as a whole. The central dome is the largest, and four smaller domes surround it. In Orthodox tradition, this arrangement is often read as Christ surrounded by the four Gospel writers. The domes are not the onion shapes you might expect from postcards of Moscow. They are rounder and calmer. The walls below them are pale, with arched windows and decorative bands that give the facade a steady, ordered rhythm.

Here is the first surprise. In the years after Poland regained independence in 1918, many Orthodox churches in Warsaw were torn down. To many Poles, they were symbols of foreign rule. The largest of them, a huge cathedral on Saxon Square in the city centre, was demolished in the 1920s. This church in Praga survived. Its role as a parish for a real, living community helped to save it.

The second surprise is about the war. During the Second World War, the left bank of Warsaw was almost completely destroyed, especially after the uprising of 1944. Praga, on the right bank, suffered far less. As a result, the cathedral still stands in its original form. Much of what you see in the Old Town is careful reconstruction. Much of what you see here is the original nineteenth century building.

Today the cathedral belongs to the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Autocephalous simply means self-governing — the church leads itself, rather than answering to Moscow or another centre. Its members are Polish citizens, and many come from the east of the country, near the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. For them, this is not a museum. It is the place where they are baptised, married and buried, and where they gather at Easter.

If the doors are open, step inside quietly. The first thing most people notice is the light. It is softer than in a Catholic church, and it falls from the high windows of the central dome. The second thing is the smell — beeswax candles and incense, which settle into the air and stay there. In Orthodox churches, many worshippers stand rather than sit, so the floor often feels open and wide.

At the front of the church stands the iconostasis, a tall screen covered in painted icons. It separates the main hall from the altar area. Icons are not decoration in the Orthodox tradition. They are treated as windows towards the holy, and believers kiss them, light candles before them and pray in front of them. Watch how people move through the space. Many make the sign of the cross from right to left, the Orthodox way.

If you visit during a service, you will hear something you may not expect. Orthodox worship uses no organ and, traditionally, no instruments at all. Everything is sung by voices alone. The choir and the priest answer each other in long, slow phrases, and the sound fills the dome above you. Visitors are generally welcome to stand at the back and listen, as long as they are dressed modestly and stay quiet.

When you come back outside, look at the setting again. The cathedral stands next to Praga Park, and the trees soften the noise of the road. Across the avenue, the streets of old Praga begin. This district has long been known as the rougher, more working-class side of Warsaw. In recent years, artists, cafes and small galleries have moved in, but the neighbourhood still feels less polished than the city centre.

Before you walk on, take one last look up at those five domes. They have watched Russian rule end, a new Poland begin, a war destroy the city across the river, and a long, slow rebuilding. Through all of it, a small community has kept lighting its candles here. As the trams pass and the bells of the city ring in the distance, notice how quiet the space around the cathedral still feels.