Attractions of Khmelnytskyi district

The majestic Medzhibizh Castle at the confluence of the Buzhok River with the Pivdeniy Buh, where the ancient Rus city of Mezhibozh stood in the 11th and 13th centuries, began to be built in 1362 by princes Koriatovych (Koryatovych), who received these lands from the Grand Duke Olherd of Lithuania.

Medzhibizh Castle became an outpost on the eastern border of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, later Poland. In the XV-XVI centuries, he successfully repelled Tatar attacks.

In 1540, the castle passed into the possession of the noble family of the Russian voivodes of Senyavsky, who rebuilt it and strengthened it with corner towers. An elegant palace and a Gothic chapel were built on the territory, which was later rebuilt in the Baroque style. A small garrison and palace servants occupied the service premises.

Princes Chartoriysky added even more luxury to the architecture in the 18th century.

The castle survived to this day in a good condition, although it was damaged during two world wars. The pentagonal Knight's Tower with an observation deck, the castle church, the carriage row and the barracks, which house the museum exhibits of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Mezhibyzh", have been restored. In particular, historical and ethnographic museums, as well as the Holodomor Museum. The restoration of the palace is ongoing.

In August, the "Ancient Medzhibizh" festival with knightly tournaments takes place on the territory of the fortress.

The Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Yarmolyntsi was founded in 1792. A year later, construction began at the expense of the Orlovsky Counts, which lasted until 1862.

In Soviet times, the premises of the Peter and Paul Church were used as a cultural center, which is still visible from the outside, even after the return of the church to the Catholic community.

The Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Holovchyntsi is one of the oldest Orthodox monasteries in Podillya.

The monastery was founded in 1540 by the crown field hetman Mykola Sinyavskyi. During the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was settled by the Basilians, and in 1795 it was returned to the Orthodox.

The monastery was closed for the first time in 1923, a shelter for homeless children was organized on the territory. During the Second World War, the activity of the monastery was briefly restored, but soon it was closed again. Until 1996, the buildings belonged to a children's boarding school.

Today, the monastery is being revived: the monastery church and residential building have been reconstructed, a new bell tower has been erected, the abbot's building has been rebuilt, an almshouse and a pilgrim hotel have been built.

On the territory of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, there is a miraculous Onufriy Spring, and the miraculous image of Saint Onufriy the Great is preserved in the temple.

The ruins of the Church of the Holy Trinity are located next to the Medzhybizh castle - on a hill fortified by a stone retaining wall.

The Baroque-style church with Gothic elements was built under the Senyavsky magnates in 1632, when Catholicism was massively planted by the Poles in Podillya.

The church is stone, cruciform in plan. The ceilings were vaulted, the plasticity of the faceted volumes was emphasized by tall, pointed windows. The decoration was ascetic.

In the second half of the 20th century, the Trinity Church was destroyed. It has lost its authentic appearance and the monastery building is located next to it.

The Holy Trinity Church in Yarmolyntsi was founded in 1761 at the expense of Pavlo Starzhynskyi as a Catholic church of the Bernardine monastery.

In 1832, the monastery and the church were closed, the premises were transferred to the Orthodox Church. The reconstruction of the Trinity Church was completed in 1835, and a new bell tower was built in 1891. The cells of the Bernardine monastery have also been preserved.

Today it is the Saint Peter and Paul Church of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The ramparts of the Hubyn chronicled ancient Rus hillfort are located on the high bank of the Sluch River, opposite from the center of the village of Hubyn.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Hubyn was one of the largest cities of the Bolokhiv Land - an ancient Rus historical region in the upper reaches of the Pivdennyi Buh bordering the Galicia-Volyn and Kyiv principalities. It was destroyed in 1241 by Prince Danylo Halytskyi in revenge for the participation of the Bolokhiv princes in the campaign to Bakota. Since then, the city has not been rebuilt, but a village of the same name arose in its place.

Since 1977, archaeological research has been conducted at the Hubyn hillfort. Many artifacts were found: elements of plows, horseshoes, sticks, stone axes, pendants and other women's jewelry. These are unsurpassed examples of jewelry art of that distant time. One of the most valuable finds is the lead seal of Prince Volodymyr Vsevolodovych of Novhorod, dated 1136.

The finds are exhibited in the Starokostiantyniv Museum of Local History.

The Intercession church-castle stands surrounded by ponds on the southern outskirts of the village of Sharivka.

Its bell tower was built in the 14th century as a defensive tower on the "Kuchmansky Way". At first, it was five-tiered, square in plan. The thickness of the stone walls is 1.7 meters. In the 1430s, the nobleman Yan Domarat added a church building to the eastern facade. The volume of the church is a uniform cross.

In 1567, the church was damaged during the invasion of the Tatars, but was soon repaired by the manor headman Yakub Pretvych. For some time the temple was a Catholic church.

As a result of many alterations, the building lost its original Gothic forms. Paintings by the artist Prahtl have been preserved in the interior.

The Intercession Church-castle is a unique monument of defense architecture of Ukraine, representing a type of border triconch church.

The Holy Intercession Cathedral in Khmelnytskyi was built in 1992 on the site of a small cemetery church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which existed here since the first half of the 19th century. He was consecrated by the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.

On April 2, 2023, an incident took place in the Holy Intercession Cathedral with a priest of the Moscow Patriarchate beating a Ukrainian military officer, which caused a wave of indignation in the community, and on the same day a meeting of parishioners took place, which unanimously voted for the transfer of the religious community of the Intercession Cathedral to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Museum of the History of the City of Khmelnytskyi is located in a modern building in the pedestrian zone.

This is a small chamber museum, the exposition of which tells about the main events in the history of the city.

More than 2,000 items are presented.

The Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum is located in the former bank building (1903).

The museum's collection includes 8,000 works of art by forty contemporary artists. All works have a bright national color - from the plot motifs and traditional element in the artistic form to the color structure. In particular, there is a permanent exhibition of the works of the artist Georgy Vereyskyi.

The museum has a collection of works by the outstanding Ukrainian folk artist Mariya Prymachenko.

The art salon and fashion gallery "Art Podium" works at the museum.

The Khmelnytskyi Regional Literary Museum opened in 1992 as the Museum of the Writer Oleksandr Kuprin and the Writers of the Khmelnytskyi Region.

It is located in a small one-storey house in the center of Khmelnytskyi, opposite Shevchenko Park.

The exposition of the first hall tells about oral folk art, folklore, ancient writing, the beginning of new Ukrainian literature.

In the second hall you can get acquainted with the classics of Ukrainian literature, whose names are associated with modern Khmelnytskyi: Taras Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrayinka, Mykhaylo Kotsyubynsky, Leonid Hlibov, Mykhaylo Starytsky and others. The literature of national minorities of the region is also presented here.

The third exhibition hall tells about the writers of the XX century and modern Ukrainian literature.

Meetings with writers, presentations of new publications, thematic literary and musical evenings take place in the literary and musical room "Shine of Viburnum" with an exposition about the poet-biker Mykyta Hodovanets.

Khmelnytskyi Regional Museum of Local Lore is located in a modern building in the city center.

The funds include 60,000 items, including treasures of medieval coins and ornaments from the times of Kyivan Rus, including 4 treasures of jewelry from the Bolokhiv land.

A large collection of porcelain of the XIX-XX centuries, antique furniture and utensils is presented.

The palace of the Koselskyi landowners in Vinkivtsi was built by Karol Koselskyi in the first half of the 19th century in the so-called "Volochian style".

An architectural monument of local importance.

Now it is one of the buildings of the district hospital.

The Koselsky Palace in Manykivtsi dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, when the estate was bought by the nobleman Vinsent Koselsky.

The two-storey house in the Romanesque style has a rectangular shape with three corner towers - two hexagonal on the north side and rectangular on the south. Initially, the towers had pointed roofs with spiers, but they were replaced by ordinary tent roofs in Soviet times, when the palace housed an agricultural college, then a local club.

Parquet and tiles have been preserved in some rooms. Basements, which once housed a kitchen and pantry, have also been preserved.

Now the palace houses the Manykivtsi comprehensive school of I-III degrees.

The elegant round toothed tower rising above the Vinnytsia-Khmelnytskyi highway is a fragment of the Letychiv castle, built in the 16th century by the Kamyanets chief Yan Potocki at the request of the Polish king.

Previously, there was a wooden fortress in Letychiv, which was repeatedly burned by the Tatars. After Potocki converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in 1606, the castle came under the control of Dominican monks. They brought with them the icon of the Mother of God from the Vatican (a copy of the icon from Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome) and began rebuilding the castle into a monastery.

The Church of the Assumption (XVI-XVII centuries) has since that time been the sanctuary (holy repository) of the icon of the Virgin of Letychiv - the patroness of Podillya (now the icon is in Lublin, Poland, and a copy is in Letychiv).

During the Liberation War of 1648-1652, the monastery was destroyed, but was soon restored.

During the Second World War, a concentration camp was located here, during Soviet times - warehouses.

In 1989, the church was returned to the Roman Catholic parish of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the restoration is ongoing.

In front of the tower there is a monument to the national hero Ustim Karmalyuk, who is buried here.