Attractions of Nizhyn district

The Museum of Rare Books named after Hryhoriy Vasylkivskyi has been operating in Nizhyn since 1985 on the basis of the fundamental library of Mykola Hohol Nizhyn State University.

It is located on the second floor of the university library in the ancient building of the Merchants' Assembly in the center of the city of Nizhyn. The museum bears the name of one of its founders, Professor Hryhoriy Vasylkivskyi.

The library is based on 2,500 volumes of the personal book collection of Count Oleksandr Kushelyev-Bezborodko, who was a trustee of the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences, the predecessor of the current university.

The exposition presents many unique European and Slavic editions of the 16th - early 20th centuries, including rare copies of editions of the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (Venice, 1513), Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" (1544), "Aeneid" Virgil (1567), classic editions of the works of European thinkers of the 16th-18th centuries.

The special pride of the museum is the Holy Gospel of 1689 from the Nizhyn Annunciation Monastery, a gift of Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky. The huge tome weighs almost 18 kilograms, some pages are painted by hand, the titles are gilded.

The Resurrection Church in Baturyn is the family tomb of the last hetman of Ukraine, Kyrylo Rozumovsky.

The temple in the style of classicism was built at the expense of Rozumovsky in 1803 at the same time as the Hetman's palace. Named in the same way as the wooden church that was located until 1708 on the territory of the Baturyn fortress.

In 1805, over the grave of the hetman, his son Oleksiy Rozumovsky installed a marble tombstone in the shape of a pyramid by the sculptor Ivan Matros. Under the bas-relief with the image of the deceased, the epitaph and family coat of arms of Rozumovsky with the motto: "To multiply glory with deeds" were engraved.

The Resurrection Church was restored and consecrated in 2009.

Saint Nicholas Cathedral is the main temple of Nizhyn, one of the first examples of Ukrainian Baroque architecture.

The cathedral was built in 1658-1668 by Cossacks of the Nizhyn regiment at the expense of colonels Ivan and Vasyl Zolotarenk on the site of an old wooden temple. It repeats the classic techniques of Ukrainian wooden architecture in stone. A characteristic feature of the architecture of the five-domed temple is "comprehensiveness", that is, it looks the same from all sides. Inside, the carved iconostasis deserves attention.

In 1663, the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Nizhyn became the center of dramatic events associated with the "Black Council" - Ivan Bryukhovetskyi, the basket chieftain of the Zaporizhzhia Sich, was elected hetman of the Left Bank of Ukraine here, which is considered the beginning of the Ruin - the collapse of the hetman state.

According to local legend, in the same temple (still wooden) Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi married Hanna Zolotarenko, the sister of Nizhyn colonels, but in fact their wedding took place in Korsun.

In 1990, the Saint Nicholas Cathedral was restored and handed over to the religious community of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Warm Church of John the Baptist (1842), which was part of the complex, was rebuilt into the House of Culture (Batyuka Streetб 16).

Monuments to Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and Mariya Zankovetska have been installed in the park.

The Church of the Transfiguration in the Baroque style was built on the territory of the Nizhyn suburb of Nove Misto.

The architecture uses a rare method of combining a cross volume with a three-story finish, which is traditional for the wooden temple architecture of the western regions.

In 1857, a bell tower was completed, which has not survived to this day.

In 1861, a funeral procession stopped in the church during the transportation of the body of Taras Shevchenko to Ukraine.

During the Second World War, the Germans tried unsuccessfully to blow up the temple during their retreat.

The Yuriy Lysyansky Memorial House-Museum is a department of the Ivan Spassky Nizhyn Museum of Local Lore.

The first Ukrainian traveler around the world, Yuriy Lysyansky, was a navigator, geographer, oceanographer, cartographer and ethnographer, a descendant of the Nizhyn noble Cossack-priestly family. He took part in the first circumnavigation in the history of the Russian Empire, which took place under the command of Ivan Kruzenstern. An island in Hawaii, a peninsula in Alaska, a strait, a river and a mountain in Sakhalyn are named after him.

The Lysyansky Museum is located in the house of the priest of the Church of Saint John the Theologian, in whose family the future sailor was born in 1773. The first exhibition hall with a temporary exhibition "Traveler of the Cossack family" opened in 2021. Here are some household items of the Lysyansky family - utensils, a clay Cossack pipe, etc.

Also in the exhibition you can see items related to the life of naval officers and training in the cadet corps, weapons of the time, a model of the sloop "Neva", on which Lysyansky traveled around the world.