Church of Saints Boris and Gleb (Vyshhorod)

The written sources mention a number of church buildings that were erected in Vyshgorod during the time of Kievan Rus. In connection with the “life of Boris and Gleb”, relics of saints were buried near this church: the body of Boris in 1015 , the body of Gleb in 1020 .

In 1020, on the site of the burnt down Vasilyevsky church , a "small cage" was established, in which the bodies of the saints were placed. Then Yaroslav the Wise ordered to build a new, large, wooden five-domed church. After the completion of construction, the crayfish of Boris and Gleb were transferred to it, i.e. it became the first mausoleum church to be built in their honor.

The next temple was built under the leadership of Zhdan-Nikola ^[2] . In 1072, it was solemnly consecrated, which was attended by the sons of Yaroslav the Wise - Svyatoslav , Izyaslav and Vsevolod . In the same year, Svyatoslav Yaroslavich began the construction of a stone church in honor of Boris and Gleb. But by the time of his death in 1076, only the walls were completed. The construction was finally completed under Vsevolod Yaroslavich ^[3] , but after the completion of work, the top of the temple collapsed; for some time the temple remained in this state. His restoration began the son of Svyatoslav Oleg . The detuning was completed only in 1115 .

After the ruin of Vyshgorod in 1240, any mention of the church disappears by the troops of Batu Khan.

According to some information, it was dismantled, and the material was used to build the church of St. Nicholas (now the Peter and Paul Church on Podil) at the Dominican monastery in Kiev ^[4] .

In size, the church of Boris and Gleb could be compared with the Transfiguration Cathedral in Chernigov and St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. It was a cross-domed building with a narthex and a staircase to climb the choirs in the northwestern part. The church was stretched from west to east (42 m), and had a small width (24 m). The size of the dome square (side ~ 8 m) indicates its considerable volume and the great height of the temple. This is also confirmed by the deep (2.5 m) and wide (2.4 m in the lower part, 1.5-1.8 m in the upper) foundations. The walls were made of bricks using the masonry technique “with a hidden row”, with the inclusion of rows of stones.

Outside, the facade of the temple was decorated with arched niches, and the roof was covered with lead . Inside, the walls were painted with frescoes, and the floor was covered with irrigation tiles.

The first studies of the remains of an ancient temple were carried out in the 20s of the XIX century. The following small studies were carried out before laying the foundation of a new church in 1860 . In 1874 , during the work of the Third Archaeological Congress in Kiev, excavations of the foundation were again conducted under the leadership of Alexei Uvarov .

Subsequent archaeological excavations of the temple were carried out by the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1936 - 1937 . They showed that it was a monumental building - an eight-pillar three-nave church, one of the largest in Kievan Rus . Its area was 924 m². However, it was possible to draw up the first complete building plan only in 1952 ; this was done by the archaeological expedition of the Institute of the History of Material Culture led by Mikhail Karger ^[5] .

St. Michael's Cathedral (Vydubitsky Monastery)