Attractions of Kremenets district

The Castle Church of the Ascension of the Lord was built in 1530 as the family tomb of the Vyshnevetsky princes. Ivan Vyshnevetskyi, Dmytro Bayda's father, was involved in its construction.

About 20 representatives of the Vyshnevetskyi family are buried in the church, including the Ovruch mayor Mykhaylo Vyshnevetskyi and his wife Raina Mohylyanka.

The temple has the shape of a ship and is distinguished by excellent acoustics. Inside are religious figures made by folk craftsmen.

In 1872-1873, major repairs were carried out, new bells were cast, and the iconostasis was gilded. Two icons of the Holy Mother of God, made in the ancient Rus and Byzantine styles, were donated by princes Kostyantyn and Mykhaylo-Servatsiy Vyshnevetskyi.

During the struggle against Orthodoxy, the Ascension Church remained the only Orthodox church in the entire district. In 1963, the church was closed and looted, only 26 years later it was returned to the Orthodox Church.

Currently, the Church of the Ascension of the Lord belongs to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Stone Kremenets Castle on the site of an ancient Rus settlement was built in the 12th century on the top of Castle Hill (Bona). In the 15th century, by order of the Grand Duke Vitovt of Lithuania, it was strengthened with defensive walls.

The prosperity of Kremenets Castle is connected with the name of the Neapolitan princess Bona Sfortsa, the wife of Polish King Syhizmund I, who gave her Kremenets in 1536. A relative of the Roman emperor, Bona strengthened the castle, which at that time had three towers, high walls and a garrison armed with cannons. The castle yard housed barracks, a powder cellar, a siege well (80 meters) and a palace, which Bona turned into a luxurious residence. Although there is no reliable information about the stay of Queen Bona in Kremenets, since those times there have been legends about her beauty, temperament, experience in intrigues, but also about her extreme cruelty.

In 1648, the Kremenets Castle was stormed and completely destroyed by the Cossack detachment of Maksym Kryvonos. A tower with a gate and defensive walls have been preserved.

Excursions are conducted by employees of the Kremenets-Pochaiv state historical and cultural reserve.

The open-air museum of the Camp UPA Volyn-South was founded in 1992 in the Dihtyarnya tract near Antonivtsi, where the headquarters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army military district operated in 1942-1944.

Under the pseudonym "Kruk", which became famous for a number of successful combat operations against the Nazis. The camp withstood the blow of General von dem Bach's SS division with the support of the air force in 1943. In 1944, the largest battle in the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army took place in the Hurba tract, with 5,000 insurgents In memory of these events on the territory of the Antonivtsi camp the UPA memorial was created, the objects of the camp were recreated: the headquarters of the military district "Volyn-South", summer class officers' schools, a camp chapel near the spring, a bunker-hideout.

In 2008, the regional program for the creation of the spiritual and cultural museum complex "Antonivetska Respublika" was approved. Reconstruction of the open-air museum "Camp UPA Volyn-South" has started.

The Literary and Memorial Museum of the outstanding Ukrainian writer, publicist and public figure Ulas Samchuk opened in the village of Tyliavka, in the artist's small homeland, in 1993 in the premises of a local school.

The museum was founded on the initiative of a local ethnographer, history teacher and long-time director of the museum, Petro Panasyuk, with the support of Ulas Samchuk's wife, Mrs. Yevheniya Pasternak, who in 1994 transferred from Toronto large collections of materials, works, personal belongings of Ulas Samchuk and the writer's library. So now in the Tyliavka Literary and Memorial Museum of Ulas Samchuk you can see the table at which the outstanding master of the word worked, writing instruments, a camera, a tape recorder, a typewriter, glasses, a telephone, items of clothing, etc.

The Ulas Samchuk Museum includes 5 departments - four exhibition and one scientific. The museum's collections include about five thousand exhibits. The writer's personal library, which is presented in the museum, has more than a thousand copies.

In 2005, a bust of Ulas Samchuk was installed in front of the school, which houses the writer's memorial museum.

On the outskirts of Tyliavka, on Dermanska Street, there is the Samchuk farmstead - a house built in the 1920s, which has been completely preserved to this day. A memorial plaque in honor of Ulas Samchuk is installed on its facade.

A luxurious palace in the style of classicism with elements of the French Renaissance was built in Vyshnivets by the last of the Vyshnevetsky family, the great Polish tycoon Mykhaylo Servatsiy.

Ukrainian, Polish and French architects worked on the construction for 30 years. The palace is based on the foundations of the medieval Vyshnivets Castle, which has been repeatedly rebuilt and expanded since the 17th century.

The Vyshnevetsky Palace consists of several volumes, united during the reconstruction at the end of the 18th century into a symmetrical U-shaped composition with axial and corner risalites. On the first floor, there was an 80-meter-long hall of mirrors - an exact copy of the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles, the main hall was decorated with white ceramic tiles with a blue pattern. 3 cascades of gardens descended from the palace to the river.

In 1744, the estate passed to the Mnisheks, relatives of the Vyshnevetskys. They turned the Vyshnevetsky Palace into a first-class tycoon's residence in the late Rococo style with a magnificent art gallery. The palace was considered the most luxurious in Volyn. Honoré de Balzac, who visited Vyshnivets in 1848, called it "small Versailles".

The last owners took little care of the monument, and it was especially damaged during the Second World War. Restored in 1950, but without interior decoration. Various institutions were located here.

Today it is a branch of the "Castles of Ternopillya" nature reserve. Since 2005, a complete reconstruction has been carried out, an exhibition is already placed in the restored halls, and excursions are held.

Separate buildings of the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites are located to the east of the Vyshnevetsky Palace, to the left of the central gate.

The construction of the monastery was carried out in the 1640s at the same time as the construction of the new Vyshnivets Castle, the monastery became part of its defense system.

In 1645, Ivan Vyshnevetskyi laid the foundation of the baroque church of Saint Michael, and his descendants, Mykhaylo Servatsiy, completed the construction. It was in the Michael Church that all Vyshnevetskyi, who professed Catholicism, were buried.

In 1648, the monastery was destroyed by the Cossacks of Maksym Krivonos, who captured Vyshnivets, but was soon revived. Closed in 1832, later fell into disrepair. The church was blown up during the Soviet regime. The cell building and the fence with the monumental gate in the Baroque style have been preserved.

A monument to the Cossacks Maksym Kryvonos, who died in 1648 during the storming of Kremenets Castle, as well as graves with stone Cossack crosses of the 17th and 18th centuries are located on the territory of the current Pyatnytskyi cemetery at the foot of Mount Chercha.

More than a hundred stone tombstones with crosses have been preserved, some of which can be read with inscriptions. The monument in the form of a cross was installed in 1995.

The palace of Countess Karolina Dzembovska was built in the neoclassical style by the architect Yuzef Hofman before 1750.

The building is maintained in a romantic style with elements of Moorish color. A park was created around the villa by the English gardener Dionysius Mikler.

At the end of the 19th century, the estate belonged to Count Pavlo Demydov. Now it is secondary school No. 2.

The remains of the fortification of Danyliv Hrad with a stone church of the 13th century are located on the steep Stizhok (or Trinity) mountain on the eastern outskirts of the village of Stizhok.

The city was surrounded by three concentric circles of earthen embankments, fortified with wooden and later stone walls. The Trinity Church, located in the center, also performed defensive functions. According to legend, the fortress was founded in 1201 by Prince Roman Mstyslavych, who named it in honor of his son Danylo, but according to other sources, the city existed even earlier - from the 10th century.

In 1240, Danyliv Castle was among the three Volyn cities that Khan Baty was able to attack. However, in 1261, according to the agreement between the Volyn prince Vasylko Romanovych and the khan's jailer Burunday, the fortress was demolished, and since then it has not been restored.

Only the Trinity Church has survived. In 1551, it was reconstructed. Saint Iov of Pochayevskyi gave her special patronage. On the eastern side of the mountain, the remains of an ancient hermit cave monastery of the 10th-12th centuries, contemporaneous with the princely castle, have been preserved.

The Kremenets Orthodox Epiphany Monastery, founded in the 17th century, now occupies the premises of the Catholic monastery of the reformers built in 1760 by Stanislav Potocki.

It was at the Epiphany Monastery in 1633 that the first school, printing house and hospital were created in Kremenets. The monastery received the blessing of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla. In 1638, the brother's printing house published one of the first Church Slavonic textbooks - "Kremenetska Grammar". Later, the school was transformed into a Jesuit collegium, and the Epiphany Monastery received its current premises after the liquidation of the Greek-Catholic Union in 1832.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a three-tier bell tower was erected over the Holy Gate. The fraternal Saint Nicholas church-parochial school operated at the monastery. In 1959, the monastery was closed, in 1990 it was revived as a women's UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of the Lord in Kremenets is located opposite the Epiphany Monastery.

It was built in the 19th century without a single nail in the so-called "Volyn" style. The fire of 1942 almost completely destroyed all the wooden houses and shrines of Kremenets. Only the Orthodox Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross survived.

The Church of the Ascension belongs to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

God's Mountain is called Ostanets Mountain, which is located near the village of Velyki Berezhtsi near Kremenets on the territory of the Medobory Reserve, but is separated from the Kremenets Ridge by the Ikva River.

The height of the mountain above sea level is 366 meters. The mountain is covered with a forest with abundant vegetation. A path of health leads to the mountain, where there are several shrines. Under the very top is the Life-giving Spring, transformed into a well.

According to legend, in ancient times there was a monastery on this place. When the Tatars covered it, and the defenders of the shrine began to suffer from thirst, an image of the Mother of God appeared to them, and a healing spring gushed out of the ground at this place. Near the source is the hermit monk's cave with healing clay, over which the wooden church of the Icon of the Mother of God is built.

At the highest point of God's Mountain, on the site of the chapel with the footprint of the Mother of God, which was destroyed in the 1950s, a wooden church of the Holy Trinity and a platform for viewing the surroundings were recently built. Under the temple there is a system of caves of the 13th century monastic Siktus.

The Pochaiv History and Art Museum was founded in 1959 on the initiative of Andriy Andriyuk as a museum of atheism. Later, it was repurposed into a museum of spiritual culture, then a museum of the history of Christianity. In 2000, it became the historical and artistic department of the Ternopil Regional Art Museum, and in 2002 it became an independent historical and artistic museum.

Having changed several premises, the museum is now located in an old bank building in the center of Pochaiv.

The main exhibition is devoted to the history of the Pochaiv Lavra, sacred art of Volyn, Taras Shevchenko's stay in Pochaiv.

The Church of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called was built in Staryi Oleksynets in 1756 as a castle church. Later, it was rebuilt as an Orthodox Saint Andrew's Church.

Belongs to the community of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The Holy Spirit Pochaiv monastery was revived in the place where the monk Methodius, who came from Athos, who is considered the founder of the Pochaiv Lavra, settled in the 13th century.

The complex includes three churches: the Holy Spirit, Saint Seraphim of Sarov and All Saints. There is a miraculous icon, the relics of Saint Methodius and other shrines.

Belongs to the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.