Svensky Monastery

As the legend has it, the monastery was founded to mark the place where a miraculous icon of the Theotokos appeared to Roman, the second son of St. Mikhail of Chernigov, and cured him of blindness.

Nikodim Kondakov supposed that the icon was modeled on a mosaic from the central conch of the Assumption Cathedral in the Pechersk Monastery.

After one such raid, Ivan the Terrible donated funds sufficient to build a cathedral of five domes, a refectory church, and a belltower.

After Russia gained the Left-bank Ukraine by the Treaty of Andrusovo, the liveliest fair in the region was held annually underneath the walls of the Svensky Monastery.

The Presentation Church, rising in three towers above the main entrance to the abbey, was erected in the late 1680s in the simplified Ukrainian Baroque style.

It is believed that its design was commissioned from Ivan Fyodorovich Michurin, who had supervised construction of St Andrew's Church of Kiev.

Anthony and Theodosius (the oldest in the complex) reduced to rubble; the house where Peter the Great stayed before the Battle of Poltava torn down.