The first Holy Cross Church in Kyiv was erected by Prince Mstislav Galitsky at the beginning of the 13th century over the cliff of Starokievskaya Mountain, towering above Podol, where the famous St. Andrew’s Church. On the site of the modern church, until 1811 there was a wooden parish church of Kozhemyatskaya Sloboda on a stone foundation with a separate wooden bell tower. The church was built in 1746-1748 at the expense of residents of the Podolsk tracts Kozhemyaki and Gonchary (now the elite microdistrict Vozdvizhenka), – townspeople Artem Trofimov Kozhemyaki, Andrei Boklazhka, Nikifor Kovalenko and other parishioners who ran a local craft workshop, which was a collective member of the Kiev Brotherhood.
This church had three roofs and had features characteristic of the Baroque era – cruciform at the base, with a faceted apse in the east.
The wooden church was destroyed by the Podolsk fire of 1811. After the fire, the church was rebuilt from stone in 1811-1848 according to the design of the architect Andrei Melensky (Contract House, monument to Magdeburg Law, St. Nicholas Church on Askoldova Mogila, Church of the Nativity) at the expense of residents of Vozdvizhenskaya, Degtyarnaya, Kozhemyatskaya streets. The temple was supposed to consist of two floors – the lower warm floor was built quickly and housed the Church of the Archangel Michael. The construction of the second floor began only in 1823 and was consecrated in 1841 in the name of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. In the 1860s, the church became three-nave – the Kazan chapel was completed on the north, and the Mikhailovsky chapel with a porch and two main staircases on the south. In this church, on May 18, 1891, the future writer Mikhail Bulgakov was baptized. In 1986-1988, restoration of the upper part of the temple was carried out, and in 1991 – the lower part. This made it possible to bring the interior of the church to approximately the same form that it had before the damage caused to it in 1936-1941, when warehouses and storage facilities were located inside the building.
Where is the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross located?
Vozdvizhenskaya street, 1A
(044) 417‑06‑58
Tue—Thu: 10:00–15:00, Fri—Sun: 9:00–20:00
services: evening: Fri, Sat – 17:00 (in winter 16:00), Sun (with akathist) – 16:00; Liturgy: Sat – 08:00, Sun – 07:00 and 09:30.