Mezhyhirya Monastery

The Mezhyhirya Savior-Transfiguration Monastery (Ukrainian: Межигірський Спасо-Преображенський монастир, romanized: Mezhyhirskyi Spaso-Preobrazhenskyi Monastyr) was an Eastern Orthodox female monastery that was located in the neighborhood of Mezhyhiria outside of the Vyshhorod city limits. The monastery was located just 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) to the north of Vyshhorod. Today, the territory is part of the Vyshhorod Raion, Kyiv Oblast (province) in northern Ukraine. The location is situated in the Mezhyhirya ravine, on the right bank of the Dnieper River in close proximity to the Kyiv Reservoir. It is unknown when the monastery was founded, although several different legends and stories about its founding exist. At the time of its height, the Mezhyhirya Monastery was considered a spiritual center of the Kievan Rus' royal Rurikid house, and later the Cossack Hetmanate. As an important monastery of the Zaporozhian Host, the Mezhyhirya Monastery left a rich legacy behind it. The monastery was mentioned in one of Taras Shevchenko's poems, "Chernets," written in 1847, and was the subject of a drawing by him. Nikolai Gogol's novel, "Taras Bulba," published in 1835, also mentions the monastery. Throughout its existence, it was destroyed, and then restored numerous times, until it was demolished by Soviet authorities in 1935. Currently, the area of the former monastery is located on a fenced-in woodland territory next to Novi Petrivtsi village and is now a museum.