Saint Cyril's Church

A 12th-century church on the northern edge of the city — one of the very few Kyivan Rus buildings to survive almost intact above ground. The exterior was given a Baroque overlay in the 18th century, but the cross-domed plan inside is original, and so are some of the 12th-century frescoes.

The frescoes are the reason to go. The standout work is by Mikhail Vrubel: a young, unknown artist when commissioned to restore the church in the 1880s, he ended up painting four new icons whose intensity prefigures his later masterpieces.

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A story
The 19th-century restoration of the church's medieval frescoes was led by the young Mikhail Vrubel, who painted his startling icons of the Virgin and Saint Cyril here in 1884 — among the first works of his career. He painted them while reading Dostoevsky and breaking off, occasionally, to climb the scaffolding and weep.