Landmarks • The city centre is dominated by the large cathedral of the Saviour's Transfiguration. It is a
neoclassical structure of the 18th century, extensively repaired and reconstructed in 1858 and in the 1880s when the 56-metre-high bell tower (180 ft) was added. The interior features frescoes by
Vladimir Makovsky and
Klavdiy Lebedev. • The Resurrection Church (1702), the oldest structure in the town, has had restoration work. • The cathedral of the monastery of
St. Pantaleon was erected in 1911 to a design by
Aleksey Shchusev and resembles medieval monuments of
Novgorod and
Pskov. • A church of Saints Peter and Paul in the town's cemetery was built in 1851. Beside the church there are tombs of the Kharytonenkos and Sukhanovs with monuments by sculptors
A. Croisy and
M. Antokolski. • The Cathedral of Holy Trinity was built in 1902–1914 on the same pattern as the Cathedral of St. Isaac in St. Petersburg. The author of the design was Sumy architect G. Sholts. The work on the decorative design was not completed because of the revolutionary events of 1917.
Museums The
Sumy Regional Art Museum was opened in 1920. It started with nationalized private collections of the town and district. Paintings of
Taras Shevchenko,
Vladimir Borovikovsky, I. Shyskin,
Arkhip Kuindzhi and
Tetyana Yablonska are on display, including a Dutch landscape by a painter of
Jan van Goyen's circle. Today the museum contains unique paintings and works of applied art. The building of the early 20th century originally belonged to the
State Bank. The Museum of Local Lore was opened in 1920. In the years of fascist occupation, the most important items of its collections were lost. Today it contains unique collections covering
archeology and the natural history of the Sumy region. It is located in the building of the 19th century which originally was the seat of the district government. In 1905 it was given to the printing house and publishing house of the first Sumy newspapers. In different years the building was visited by A. Kuprin and V. Korolenko, the famous Russian writers. The Chekhov Museum, located on Chekhov street is an architectural complex representing Lintvarev's country estate of the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1888 and 1889 the great writer and dramatist
Anton Chekhov was dreaming of settling in Luka forever, but his dream did not come true. "Abbacia and the Adriatic Sea are wonderful, but Luka and Psiol are better", he wrote in 1894 in a letter from Italy to his friends in Sumy. This is also a place where n Chekhov's brother,
Nikolai Chekhov, died in 1889. The
Museum of Banking history in the Sumy oblast and the History of Ukrainian Money was founded in 2006 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the
Ukrainian Academy of Banking based on a unique collection of Ukrainian bonds – the
paper money out of circulation, which were given to the academy by the
National Bank of Ukraine. The exposition of the bonds is arranged in the thematic-chronological order - from the first appearance of money to the present day. In addition to the numerous historical documents, photographs, metal money (coins, souvenir bars), and commemorative medals of the National Bank of Ukraine, there is an exhibition presenting technical appliances used in the
banking industry in the late 20th century. ==Notable people==