St. Michael’s cathedral
St. Michael’s golden-domed monastery ensemble is located on the St. Michael’s square. It is considered to be a real miracle of restoration. As for its age it is virtually a contemporary of the St. Sophia cathedral. Already in the XI-th century there was a St. Dmitry’s monastery on this place, founded by Kievan prince Iziaslav (Christian name Dmitry). In 1108 his son Sviatopolk (Christian name Mikhail) began the erection of the St. Michel’s cathedral. Its dome was gold-plated which made it unique for that time and the new cathedral and later the whole monastery gained a name “St. Michael’s golden-domed monastery”. Almost at once it became a center of the monastery and all the construction works took place around the cathedral. During its long history the cathedral repeatedly suffered from natural disasters and enemy invasions. It was rebuilt many times and at last in the middle of the XVIII-th century it became heptangular. All the sculptures were gilded and the interiors were decorated with frescos and mosaics. The cathedral became a life-saving resort for the general-governor Dmitry Dolitsyn who managed to escape death from cholera here. As an expression of gratitude to a great martyr Varvara for saving his life Golitsyn decorated a place for worshipping to her. He donated also a magnificent carved iconostasis, beautiful icons, church vessels made of gold and silver. Tsar Peter I and his wife Catherine I decided to build on and decorate yet another aisle in honor of a great martyr Catherine – patron saint of the empress. The church acquired elegant features of Ukrainian Baroque.
As soon as communists came to power the monastery was closed. Its living quarters began to be used as student dormitories and cathedral as a warehouse. In 1934 it was decided to build a huge governmental complex on the hills of the Dnepr River. The whole area of the St. Sophia square and the St. Michael’s square was planned to use for this complex. But in order to fulfill the plans the St. Michael’s monastery had to be ruined. The bell tower, range of buildings and part of the fence were wiped off the face of the earth. There was only one man -professor Nikolai Makarenko, who refused to sign the act for demolition. He died in Novosibirsk prison soon after.
In the period from 1997 to 2000 the holy place was reconstructed.
(The architect-restorer - Y. Lositskiy and others).
