Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv

Early years The Saint Sophia Cathedral (often referred to as St Sophia's Cathedral) was built as a metropolitan cathedral for Kyiv during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise. The chronicle states that in 1037, “…Yaroslavl founded a great city . . . [he] also founded the church of St. Sophia, a metropolitan [church]." The Novgorod Chronicle gives 1017 as being the foundation year of the cathedral: “In the year [1017] Yaroslav founded a great city Kyiv, and put up golden gates, and founded the church of St. Sophia." This is in comparision with the Primary Chronicles entry for 1017: “Yaroslavl entered Kiev, and churches burned down.” A third date is provided by Thietmar of Merseburg, who wrote that Prince Boleslaw was present at the cathedral in 1018. An alternative theory for the foundation date has been proposed by the Ukrainian historian Nadiia Nikitenko. According to Nikitenko, the cathedral was founded in 1011, under the reign of Yaroslav's father, Vladimir the Great, the Grand Prince of Kyiv. Her hypothesis, which suggests that the cathedral was founded on 4 November 1011 and was consecrated on 11 May 1018, is based on a new interpretation of painted images and graffiti on the cathedral walls dated by Nikitenko to between 1018 and 1036. The 1011 date has been accepted by both UNESCO and the Ukrainian government, which officially celebrated the 1000th anniversary of the cathedral during 2011. Medieval period The cathedral was designed as a burial place for Yaroslav the Wise and his descendants. He was , now located in the northern inner . It is probable that the metropolitan bishops of Kyiv were also buried in the cathedral (prior to the absorption of the Kyivan Rus' lands into the Mongol Empire), the earliest known example being the burial of Cyril II in the 1280s. In November 1240, Kyiv was besieged by the Mongols under the leadership of Batu Khan. St Sophia was damaged but not destroyed by the Mongols; like other city churches, it was looted when Kyiv was plundered by the victors. The city did not recover its former importance or prosperity for centuries following the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'. In 1203 the city was captured by Roman the Great, and the cathedral was robbed by Anna II of Kiev (the wife of Rurik Rostislavich) and their allies. During the decline of Kyiv, the cathedral continued as a metropolitan church, but the building slowly became dilapidated, and the western end in particular suffered from years of neglect. 16th19th century , Interior of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv (1854), National Museum in Warsaw From 1497 until 1577, the cathedral was left abandoned, until in that year Bogusz Gulkevych-Glibovsky renovated the cathedral at his own expense. In 1596, following the Union of Brest, ownership of the cathedral was transferred to the Ruthenian Uniate Church. From the formation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1596 until the official re-acceptance of Orthodox Christianity in 1632, St. Sophia’s Cathedral was used as place of worship for Greek Catholics; as a result of the acceptance of the union by Metropolitan Michael Rohoza, St Sophia was under the jurisdiction of the Union Church. In 1697, the wooden buildings were all destroyed in a fire. Early rebuilding and restoration work During the reign of Petro Mohyla (16331647), restoration work was begun on the cathedral. Its appearance in the mid-17th century is known from the drawings of Abraham van Westerveld and the description of Paul of Aleppo. which he carried out by Mancini in collaboration with the Ukrainian brothers Timish and Ivan Zinoviev, the gilder Yakym Evtykhiev, the icon painter Joachim, and carvers, carpenters, and masons from Moscow. Instead of maintaining a Byzantine style of architecture for the exterior of the cathedral, Mohyla and his architects were influenced by western European ideas, transformed St Sophia to give it the outward appearance of a Baroque church. The reconstruction work was continued after Mohyla's death in 1647 by Metropolitan Sylvester Kosiv, until his death in 1657. Between 1690 and 1707 a major renovation of St Sophia was overseen by the Metropolitan , with the financial assistance of Hetman Ivan Mazepa. The cathedral's galleries were raised, four new domes were added, and the tops of the towers were rebuilt in the Ukrainian Baroque style. In 1699, a new domed bell tower was built—the dome was gilded at Mazepa's expense. The other new buildings in the complex were completed by 1767. During the Soviet anti-religious campaign of the 1920s, the government called for the cathedral to be demolished and the grounds to be transformed into a park named in honour of the heroes of Perekop. The cathedral was saved from demolition. St. Sophia was the cathedral of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church from 1921 until 1930. In 1921, the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences created the , which was able to save the cathedral from being demolished. The National Reserve "Sophia of Kyiv", a state architectural and historical reserve containing the cathedral and other historic buildings, was established in 1934. This enabled research and restoration work to be carried out on the cathedral and other buildings in the complex. The last acting vicar of St Sophia, , was the incumbent from 1931 until his expulsion in 1934, after which the authorities banned services in the cathedral. Gold and silver items (including the royal gates, icons, candlesticks, vestments, and books) were confiscated, and the iconostases were dismantled and stripped of their gold. According to a previous director of the Sophia Museum, , German sappers prevented the NKVD from blowing up the cathedral, who had mined the building in September 1941. Church services were resumed in October 1941. In January 1942 the occupation authorities established a short-lived museum (it closed in October 1943 as the Germans were about to retreat from Kyiv). The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce listed the cathedral's remaining valuables. The Nazis expropriated some of the remaining historical pieces, and only a small proportion were returned after the end of the war. Representatives of five Orthodox churches read the first joint prayer for Ukraine in the cathedral in 2006. On June 10, 2025, as a result of a blast wave caused by shelling of Kyiv by the Russian Federation during the Russo-Ukrainian War, part of the central apse on the eastern facade was damaged. Later restoration work During the German occupation of Kyiv, the state of the buildings in the reserve was documented, and renovation work was begun. In 2023, an invitation to tender was initiated for a 5-year project to restore the roof, domes, and other structural elements of St. Sophia. International recognition In 1990 the ensemble of the St. Sophia Monastery was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. In 2007, the St Sophia's Cathedral was named one of the Seven Wonders of Ukraine. ==Architecture==

The original cathedral St Sophia is one of the largest churches built in Europe during the 11th century, and is one of the oldest and best-preserved examples of Kyivan Rus’ architecture. As the architects were given a task not previously encountered—to build a huge church with spacious choirs, they deviated from the standard model for a Byzantine church. To reduce costs, they used local materials, incorporating brick cross-shaped pillar into the design instead of marble columns, and slabs of pink Ovruch pyrophyllite slate and ceramic tiles instead of marble slabs. The construction materials used were brick, stone, and lime mortar. Russian scholars have in the past attributed differences between St Sophia and other Byzantine churches to the influences of Russian church architecture. The plans of the foundations of St. Sophia and an earlier church, the Church of the Tithes are similar. The cathedral's main dimensions are multiples of the number 12—a standard area of is used in the majority of the spaces. The inner radius of the central apse is equal to 12 feet, and the diameters of the drums of the small domes are also close to this value. If the thickness of the walls is taken into account, the length, width and height of the cathedral are all equal to , a measurement used since Classical antiquity. Exterior The 11th-century cathedral was a large five-nave church, with the eastern ends of the naves completed by semicircular apses (semi-circular recesses at the east end of the main building). The core of the cathedral (without the galleries) was a square of sides in length, the same size of the domed square of the Hagia Sophia. The original building was topped with 13 domes covered in lead sheets, with 12 smaller domes grouped around the largest dome, forming a stepped pyramidal shape. The central part of the cathedral was surrounded on the north, west and south sides by a two-tiered inner row of galleries, and a single-tiered outer row that was topped by a balcony, or . The outside of the cathedral was not originally plastered. The facades were decorated with recessed niches, windows had carved wooden frames. The walls were laid out of large natural stones of granite and pink quartzite that alternated with rows of flat bricks. A pink lime-cement mortar was used, and pieces differently-sized stones were included in the thick layer of the mortar. Interior The interior of the cathedral has been preserved almost unchanged since the 11th century. The rectangular space inside the original cathedral was divided by 12 columns into five parallel naves intersected by transverse naves, to produce what Nikitenko has described as a "hierarchically ordered cosmos". The intersection of the central nave and the transept, above which the main dome rises, forms an equilateral cross. There were five altars occupying the aspses at the east end. The central cross is closed from the east by the wall of the main altar, and from the north, west and south by two-tier three-span arcades (the western one has not been preserved). At the corners of the western side, two stair towers were built, to lead to the choirs. The ancient mosaic floor, of which only a few fragments are exposed, was composed of designs that reflected Byzantine architectural forms. Under the main dome, a large square with a circle (representing the union of earth and heaven) was laid out. ==Interior decoration==

St Sophia is unique in that on the interior walls are preserved the world's greatest collection of early 11th-century mosaics and frescoes. Masterpieces include the Pantocrator, the Virgin Orans, the Communion of the Apostles, the Deisis, and the Annunciation. The mosaics were made with a shining golden background. The predominant foreground colours were blue and grey-white in combination with purple. The large number of colours used is one indication that the glassmakers and smalt manufacturers of the period were highly skilled—the colours used have not been able to be replicated by modern experts. {{multiple image | perrow=2 |direction = horizontal | total_width= 450| header = | footer = The frescoes in the transept depict scenes relating to Christ. Four of the best preserved are of the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ's descent into Hell, the appearance of Christ to the Holy Women, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit. The choir features subjects as the Wedding at Cana, the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, The Lord's Supper, Abraham and the Three Angels, and the three youths in the fiery furnacе. The largest group of images were a unique series of saints. Over 250 are extant; the original number was more than three times as many. All of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste are depicted in a separate composition. The frescoes in the towers that led to the original outer galleries are of secular subjects, as they were intended to be seen by the Grand Prince and a few of the clergy. These frescoes depict scenes of the Byzantine court and the Hippodrome of Constantinople, such as the emperor watching races in his box, hunting scenarios, and scenes with warriors.