Dear Friends!

We continue to acquaint you with the Preserve’s collections.

Take a trip to our virtual museum during your coffee or tea break and admire the unique cultural assets of the Museum Fund of Ukraine!

The Preserve collection contains glass photographic negatives (13.0 × 18.0 cm) with rare images of the Kyiv Church of St. Basil (of the Three Saints), destroyed in the 1930s under Bolshevik rule.

This is a cruciform four-pillar three-nave triapsidal single-domed church founded in 1183. In the times of Petro Mohyla in the 1630s, the church was restored and reconsecrated in honor of the three Fathers of the Church – Sts. Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian. At the end of the 17th century, under Metropolitan Barlaam of Yasynsky, the church was restored and partially rebuilt. It acquired the typical forms of Ukrainian Baroque style.

During 1934–1935, the monument was destroyed (dismantled and blown up) by the Bolsheviks, who justified this decision by the need to build a Government Center after the capital of the USSR was moved from Kharkiv to Kyiv, as if the church has not any historical or artistic value.

In 1936–1937, the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party was erected on the site of the Church of the Three Saints as part of a development project of the Government Center of the Architect Joseph Langbard. Today the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is located there (Mykhailivska Square, 1).

Let’s discover the beauties of the Preserve’s collection together!

#музейзафіліжанкоюкави, #museumcoffeebreak, #museumteabreak, #MuseumFromHome

Fig. 1–6. St. Basil Church (of the Three Saints) in Kyiv. Early 1930-s [КПЛ-Н-1194; КПЛ-Н-1195; КПЛ-Н-1205; КПЛ-Н-1208; КПЛ-Н-1216; КПЛ-Н-1228]