Attractions of Chortkiv district

The Church of the Holy Intercession in Chortkiv is one of the new churches of the city, which is distinguished by its rich decoration.

It was built in 1905 at the expense of parishioners on the site of a wooden church. The building of the Intercession Church in the classical style was built according to the project of the Lviv architectural company under the leadership of the architect Mykola Shashkevych and the Chortkiv builder Andriy Drazhnovsky.

According to legend, after the consecration of the Church of the Holy Intercession, a miraculous spring broke out in the yard, over which a chapel was built in honor of the Mother of God. In 1944, another miracle happened: a German shell hit the church, severely damaging it, but the icon of the Mother of God remained intact. And in 2004, there was an apparition of the Mother of God over the chapel of the Queen, built on the site of a new spring.

The 40-meter bell tower with a gilded dome was built in 1996.

There is a bathhouse on the territory of the temple.

Intercession Church belongs to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Order of Dominican Observants was built by Vinnytsia's headman, Colonel Lyudvik Kalynovsky, in the late Baroque style.

The project was developed by the famous architect Yan de Vitte, commandant of the Kamyanets fortress. The plan of the temple is made in the form of the family coat of arms of the Kalynovsky family - an arrow with two stars near the forked tail. The role of stars is performed by multifaceted towers, the tip of an arrow is guessed in the altar part. The facade is crowned by a sculpture of the Virgin Mary.

Nearby is the monastery building, which, after the abolition of the Dominican monastery by the Austrian authorities in 1784, was used as a priest's house.

During Soviet times, the church was closed and abandoned, now services are sometimes held. Restoration has begun.

The Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin was built in Buchach in 1764 in the late Baroque style according to the project of the architect Bernard Meretyn (according to other sources - Yohan Shiltser).

The Intercession temple has a defensive character. The impression of "femininity" of the interior is created by the rounded corners and harmonious lines of the portal. The Deacon Gate, the work of the outstanding sculptor Ivan Pinzel, has been preserved.

During the revival of the Intercession Church after the Soviet period, the burials of dozens of repressed residents of the city were discovered in the basements.

A monument to Ivan Heorhiy (Yohan-Heorh) Pinzel was erected in 2014 near Buchach Town Hall on the initiative and at the expense of local businessman Vasyl Balabala.

Ivan Heorhiy Pinzel, a prominent sculptor of the mid-18th century, a representative of the late Baroque and Rococo, is the founder of the Lviv School of Sculptors. He lived and worked in Buchach at the invitation of the owner of the city, Mykola Potoski, creating many outstanding works here in collaboration with the architect Bernard Meretyn: the altars of the Church of the Assumption and the Church of the Intercession, the facades of the Buchach Town Hall, roadside figures, etc.

The monument to the sculptor was created by Roman Vilhushynsky in an expressive manner, characteristic of the Pinzel school. The brush is shown with a cutter in hand while working on a sculpture of the Virgin Mary. The height of the monument reaches 3 meters.

The castle-ship on the hill, which is washed on three sides by one of the tributaries of Zbruch, got its nickname due to its characteristic oblong shape.

Sydoriv Castle was built in the middle of the 17th century by the field hetman of the crown, Martyn Kalynovsky, as his own residence. The date of construction is recorded on a brick slab above the entrance arch. The length of the castle reached 178 meters, while the width was only 30 meters. Seven defense towers were located along the perimeter of the walls, of which only three remain. The walls of the northern edge of the well-preserved castle are joined at sharp angles, which gives the fortress the appearance of a ship floating in the sea of green.

Sydoriv Castle was badly damaged during the Turkish invasion of 1672, then it was restored, but from the beginning of the 18th century it lost its defensive significance, fell into disrepair and gradually collapsed until our time.

Access is free.

Near Podillya Tovtry, on the outskirts of the village of Vikno, there are karst lakes on a wide meadow, which are called "vikno" (windows) in these parts.

20 million years ago, waves of the warm Sarmatian Sea splashed here. From its underwater reef, giant side formations (tovtry) formed, and when the sea receded, hills several hundred meters high were formed. Now in the lowlands is a field where karst lakes were formed.

There used to be several dozen of them, then there were five, but after land reclamation in the 1980s, only two lakes remained: Sinye and Bezodnya. The lakes were formed in limestone cavities, the depth of which cannot be determined. Although the bottom of the lakes reaches four meters, the underground passages from where the powerful springs come are much deeper.

The water temperature in the lakes always remains at +12 degrees. The surface of the water in them is covered with algae, so during the day, depending on the lighting, the lakes change their color - from dark blue to blue and purple.

Karst lakes do not freeze in the strongest frosts and glow at night.

Two towers and a fragment of the defensive wall remained from the Kryvche Castle, built in 1639-1650 by the Kontsky Polish nobles in the village of Kryvche.

The castle had an almost regular rectangular shape with four corner towers and one entrance tower. During the first century of its existence, it was constantly at the epicenter of the Polish-Turkish wars, passing from hand to hand. During the Liberation War, he was captured by the Cossacks. In 1672, the Turkish Sultan Mahomet IV stopped here when he was returning from Buchach after signing the Peace of Buchach.

Only in the 18th century, the Kryvche Castle lost its strategic importance and was transformed into the residence of the Polish magnates of the Holiyovsky. In the 19th century, the entrepreneur Lazar Zeydman bought the ruins, ordering most of them to be dismantled for building materials for a distillery.

An attempt at restoration was made in 1920 by the Podillya Tourism and Local History Society.

Now, the Kontsky Castle is part of the National Reserve "Castles of Ternopil Region". Two towers are preserved, access is free.

The well-preserved ruins of a defensive castle rise on Mount Strelka above Zbruch.

The Kudryntsi castle was built by the Polish noblemen Herburts to protect against frequent Tatar and Wallachian raids at the time (the Moldavian border was nearby and the Wallachian road passed).

A quadrangular fortress with three corner towers on three sides was protected by the steep slopes of the mountain. The weakly defended northern side was separated from the plateau by a moat and rampart, as well as a powerful fortification complex with two towers, one of which was the entrance. In 1648, the Cossack troops of Maksym Kryvonos expelled the Polish garrison from the castle, and it was also captured twice by the Turks.

In the 18th century, the Polish magnates Humenetsky reconstructed the Kudryntsi Castle, turning it into a palace-residence, and the next owners, the Kozebrodsky, gathered a collection of works of art here (individual copies of ancient canvases and furniture can now be seen in the Ternopil Museum of Local Lore).

There is a legend about a ghost - supposedly, sometimes in the castle you can see the spirit of a young girl who was walled up by the Turks. Another legend tells about treasures buried by the owners of the castle, over which the earth hums.

The Greek Catholic Church of the Miracle of Saint Archangel Michael is located near the road in the very center of the village of Nivra in the premises of the former Roman Catholic church, an architectural monument of local importance.

A small Roman Catholic church in Nivre was built in 1937. In Soviet times, it was closed and gradually fell into disrepair. In 2011, the Greek-Catholic community began the restoration of the church, and already in 2013, the consecration of the restored church took place.

The roadside figure of the Mother of God was installed in Buchach in 1751 by order of the owner of the town, Mykola Potoski. It was one of the early works of the outstanding sculptor Ivan Heorhiy Pinzel and the architect Bernard Meretyn. The coat of arms of the Potocki family "Pilyava" is depicted on the pedestal.

During Soviet times, the figure of the Virgin Mary was destroyed, but part of the pedestal was preserved. It was restored in 2006 in its former place, the author of the copy is Roman Vilhushynskyi.

The bright half-timbered building of the Old Town Hall with a clock tower and a weather vane in the shape of a rooster is the hallmark of Chortkiv. It is surrounded by wooden shopping arcades, which are still used for their intended purpose - they house shops and other commercial establishments.

The Old Town Hall in Chortkiv was built in 1905-1908 on the initiative of the then mayor Ludwik Noss. After the First World War, the newly built shopping arcades continued to be developed as a trade and administrative complex. Together with small shops, the magistrate was located here until the New Town Hall was built in the city.

The building is made in the half-timbered (frame) style, which is characteristic of the medieval architecture of the northern regions of Western Europe. The tower houses a Swiss clock with four dials, made in 1887 by the Munich firm "Johann Mannhardt". The clock mechanism is still in working order. It can be viewed during tours of the tower, organized by the Chortkiv Tourist Information Center.

The "Lemkivska Svitlytsia" cafe, located in the Old Town Hall, offers national Lemko dishes (after deportation from Poland, one of the large Lemko communities settled in Chortkiv).

The "Optymistychna" cave is the largest gypsum cave in the world (the length of the investigated part is more than 240 kilometers) and the third largest karst cave (after "Mamontova" in the USA and Sac-Actun in Mexico).

It is located southwest of the village of Korolivka. It was opened in 1965 by Lviv speleologists from the "Cyclops" club.

"Optymistychna" was called as a joke, because at first the colleagues evaluated the pioneers' chances of success very low and called them "optimists".

The cave is horizontal, the labyrinth of passages runs at a depth of 60-80 meters, the passageways are sometimes narrow and covered with clay. 10 relatively isolated cave areas were studied, which differ in the morphology of the passages, the color and structure of gypsum, the number and shape of crystals. There are stalactites and helictites.

Tourists can visit the "Optimistichna" cave only with special equipment accompanied by an experienced speleologist instructor.

In 2012, an art museum and a museum of secondary formations were opened in the cave.

The cult complex in the village of Rukomysh arose around the cave temple of the Holy Sepulchre, founded in the 13th century by Kyiv monks who came here after the destruction of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.

The basis for the temple was a natural cave in the travertine rock, which was further expanded. Next to the temple there are several smaller grottoes-cells, cut out of the rock by hand.

Later, the monks moved to Buchach, where they founded a new monastery, and only a few elders remained in Rukomysh.

In 1768, the Saint Onuphrius Church was built at the foot of the rock. It houses a unique wooden sculpture of Saint Onuphrius by the outstanding sculptor Ivan Heorhiy Pinzel, discovered here by chance.

The complex also includes a pool for sanctifying water and a Stations of the Cross with several chapels.

Borshchiv's most prominent building is located in the center, in the pedestrian zone.

The Ukrainian society "Rusky People's House" was founded in 1908 on the initiative of lawyer Mykhaylo Dorundyak and professor Mykhaylo Hrushevsky. At the same time, a building with two towers in the form of domes, typical of Rus Orthodox architecture, was built at the expense of the public according to the project of Galician architect Vasyl Nahirny.

The "Rusky People's House" was the center of development of ancient Ukrainian (Rusyn, not Russian) culture, which is reflected in the name. An honorary member of the "People's House" was Mykhaylo Hrushevsky, who often visited Borshchiv and monitored the construction.

Currently, it is also the cultural center of the city - there is a museum of local history, as well as a museum of Taras Shevchenko with an art gallery - the first in the western part of Ukraine. In particular, the exhibition presents the famous borscht embroidery in black and white.

A cascade of waterfalls on the small river Rusylivska, which flows into Strypa near the village of Rusyliv.

In total, there are 20 waterfalls with a height of 1.5 to 12 meters in a three-kilometer canyon hidden in a forest grove. The total height of the cascade is 150 meters.

The beauty and variety of forms of the cascade are complemented by the bright colors of the local nature: dark red soil, green leaves, a huge number of colorful butterflies and dragonflies.

The romantic Rusyliv Falls compete for beauty with the similar scenery of the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia.