[1] Kaniv is a historical town that was founded in the 11th century by Kievan prince Yaroslav the Wise.

[citation needed] The city is known today mostly for the burial site of Taras Shevchenko, the great Ukrainian poet and artist.

Later, in the 18th century, it became a popular destination for elderly Cossacks, who wanted to live out their days on the banks of the great Dnieper River[citation needed], and on the Chernecha Mountain, where, according to legend, a monastery stood in the past.

[3][4] There is no definite information on the source and meaning of the city's name; supposedly its name is derived from the personal nickname Kanya ('buzzard').

[5] Mykola Yanko [uk] in his Toponymic dictionary of Ukraine says that the name is derived from Turkish word meaning the place of khan.

Until the 13th century, the central part of Kaniv was so called "Hellenic town" located at the Moskovka Mountain.

[3] Kaniv has been mentioned in report of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine after his 1245 travel to the Mongol Empire.

In 1600, it received the Magdeburg Rights, but the city's prosperity was halted by successive plagues, fires, and Cossack unrest.

In 1775 Kaniv became a personal property of the King of Poland Stanisław August Poniatowski who, in 1777, gave it away to his nephew S.Poniatowski.

Rebuilt in 1966–70, since 1972 the Dormition Cathedral building was housing the newly established Kaniv folk art museum.

After dissolution of the Soviet Union, the church was passed to the Easter Orthodox community of Moscow Patriarchate, while the museum was relocated to another former religious building that used to belong to the Ukrainian Order of Saint Basil the Great.