Chernihiv was first mentioned (as Черниговъ)[citation needed] in the Rus'–Byzantine Treaty (907), but the time of its establishment is unknown.

[8] Artifacts from the Khazar Khaganate uncovered by archaeological excavations at a settlement there indicate that it seems to have existed at least as early as the 9th century.

It was there that the Black Grave, one of the largest and earliest royal mounds in Eastern Europe, was excavated in the 19th century.

The grand principality was the largest in Kievan Rus and included not only the Severian towns but even such remote regions as Murom, Ryazan and Tmutarakan.

The city was burned again by Crimean khan Meñli I Giray in 1482 and 1497 and in the 15th to 17th centuries changed hands several times between Lithuania, Muscovy (1408–1420 and from 1503), and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1618–1648), where it was granted Magdeburg rights in 1623 and in 1635 became a seat of Chernihiv Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province.

Under the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo the legal suzerainty of the area was ceded to the Tsardom of Russia, with Chernihiv remaining an important center of the autonomous Cossack Hetmanate.

The Germans operated a Nazi prison[12] and a forced labour battalion for Jews in the city.

On 10 March 2022, Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko announced that the city had been completely encircled by Russian forces.

[29] The 2022 Russian invasion caused a new wave of Ukrainization in Chernihiv, with more and more people switching to Ukrainian in their private lives.

The Snov freezes in November – late January and stays icebound until March – early April.

Chernihiv has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with cold, cloudy and snowy winters, and warm, sunny summers.

The average annual temperature for Chernihiv is 7.0 °C (44.6 °F), ranging from a low of −5.6 °C (21.9 °F) in January to a high of 19.5 °C (67.1 °F) in July.

The crowning achievement of Chernihiv masters was the exquisite Piatnytska Church, constructed at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries.

This graceful building was seriously damaged in the Second World War; its original medieval outlook was reconstructed to a design by Pyotr Baranovsky.

The historic center of Chernihiv has been on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List since 1989,[36] but currently the creation of a renewed nomination is underway.

[37][38] The earliest residential buildings in the downtown date from the late 17th century, a period when a Cossack regiment was deployed there.

St. Catherine Church (1715), with its 5 gilded pear domes, traditional for Ukrainian architecture, is thought to have been intended as a memorial to the regiment's exploits during the storm of Azov in 1696.

All through the most trying periods of its history, Chernihiv retained its ecclesiastical importance as the seat of either a bishopric or an archbishopric.

The nearby mother superior's house is thought to be the oldest residential building in the Left-Bank Ukraine.

The icon, called Yeletskaya after the fir wood it was painted upon, was taken to Moscow by Svyatoslav's descendants, the Baryatinsky family, in 1579.

Other historic abbeys in the vicinity of Chernihiv include those in Kozelets and Hustynia, which feature superb examples of Ukrainian Baroque.

In 1995 a manufacturer of goods for animals, called COLLAR Company, was established by Yuri Sinitsa.

In 1893, on the left bank of the Desna River, in the area of a modern automobile bridge, a railway station was built along the Kyiv highway.

As of 2015, regular trains from Minsk to Odesa, and from St. Petersburg to Kyiv to Kharkiv run through Chernihiv, and there are direct connections with Moscow.

In 1977 Desna was revived now in place of the amateur club "Khimik Cherhihiv" that won regional competitions.

For the first time in the entire history, the place will be represented in professional football by two teams, one of which is FC Desna Chernihiv.

[44] In 2022 the club was admitted into the Ukrainian First League for the season 2022–23, keeping high the name of the city in the sport sphere.