Korop

The Ascension Church was built in Korop in 1764 at the expense of the Cossack chieftain Petro Yurkevych, who commanded the artillery unit stationed in the city, the General Armata.

The temple has a tower-like shape with an octagonal drum. Samples of easel oil painting of the end of the 18th century have been preserved inside.

The Church of the Assumption in the center of Korop was founded in 1767 (according to other sources - in 1716).

At first, the temple was made of wood. The stone Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the style of classicism was built in 1894 at the expense of the Korop burghers Yevdokym and Makar Stovptsov according to the will of their father Antip Stovptsov. The abbot of the church was Ivan Kybalchych , the father of the revolutionary terrorist Mykola Kybalchych .

Now the temple is active. The relics of Saint Feofan of Rykhlivskyi (1881-1977), who became famous for prophecies and healings, are kept here. A bell tower has been erected nearby.

The Korop Regional Historical and Archaeological Museum is located in the building of the former Theodosius Church, which was built in the 1880s in the pseudo-Rus style.

Under Soviet rule, the baths were removed from the temple and housed first a cinema and then a museum.

Archaeological, geological and ethnographic collections are of considerable value. In the exposition you can see finds from the Mezyn Paleolithic site, a diorama of the Radychiv settlement from the times of Kyivan Rus, samples of traditional clothes and towels.

The museum also widely presents samples of ceramic pottery and tiles of Korop region, which was known as one of the leading centers of pottery.

The architecture of the region is represented by models of all 9 churches that existed in Korop in the early XX century.

The memorial museum of the revolutionary-populist and inventor Mykola Kybalchych was opened in Korop in the house of the priest in which he was born in 1853.

Even in his youth, Kybalchych, who was fond of chemistry, became an underground revolutionary, working in the so-called "hell laboratories" where explosives were made. At the same time, he developed a diagram of the world's first jet aircraft, the drawing of which was scratched on the wall of a prison cell. In 1881, he was executed for an attempt to assassinate the Russian Tsar Oleksandr II.

A family of local artists - Olena Lukash and Mykola Hara-Zhuk - stood near the sources of the creation of the Kybalchych Museum in Korop. In particular, the museum exposition presents a model of the Kybalchych rocket.

The Saint Illya Church in Korop is an unusual defensive-type church that has no analogues on the Left Bank of Ukraine.

According to one of the versions, the foundation of the temple is a tower that was part of the system of city fortifications of the XV-XVI centuries. Other researchers date its construction to the second half of the 17th century, when hetman Demyan Mnohohrishny created a special hetman hundred and artillery yard in Korop.

The Saint Illya Church has powerful walls up to 2 meters thick, narrow loophole windows, a complex layout and a system of secret passages. It is possible that even then it simultaneously performed three functions: religious, military and civil. Food and ammunition were stored on the first floor, religious services were held on the second, and the third was a military one.

In the 18th century, the church-fortress was reconstructed and consecrated in honor of Saint Illya the Thunderer. According to tradition, Cossack cannons installed on the temple were fired during major holidays.

The Saint Illya Church was badly damaged during the Second World War, the upper part was dismantled. At present, the church has been handed over to the Orthodox community of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, but restoration has been frozen.