Saint Sophia Cathedral

Saint Sophia Cathedral is the most recognisable building in Harbin, a Byzantine-style Russian Orthodox church with a soaring green onion dome and four smaller turrets rising above the pedestrianised Sophia Square in the city's historic Daoli District. The current brick structure was built in 1923–1932, replacing an earlier wooden church erected in 1907 by Russian railway workers and settlers who flooded into the city after Russia's construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway. At its peak Harbin had a Russian population of over 100,000, and Saint Sophia served a congregation of thousands. Today the cathedral no longer holds religious services; it houses the Harbin Architecture Arts Museum, with photographic and architectural exhibits documenting the city's Russian, Jewish, and Japanese colonial history. The surrounding pedestrian square hosts an evening market and is particularly atmospheric when snow blankets the city and the dome is floodlit against the night sky.