St. Nicholas Church in Dikanka village

Folk facts, which, actually coincide with archival documents suggest that once a upon a time, during the possession of Lazar Baranovich, the archbishop of Chernigov Dikanka lads, has happened a story near Dikanka. Mysteriously, on the one of the stumps emerged the icon of the St.Nicholas.

People, who found it, tried to bring it to the already existing  church. But the next morning the icon was getting back to the forest. It has happened many times. Finally, it was decided to build a temple on the icon’s location . Thus the St. Nicholas Church was erected in the 70s of 17th century. On the stump, on which the icon was found, people set up the cross. The temple was built so that the relic was inside, in the altar area.

Temple in terms of architecture was built as a rotunda with columns on the facade. The height of holiness is relatively small, only 15 meters long and only 25 meters in diameter. The church has had a good acoustics, thanks to the double dome, which was used firstly. So called "air furnaces" between the first and second floor are construction, the design of which  is still unriddle. Thanks to them airing and space heating was implemented. A kind of an analogue of modern air conditioning.
St. Nicholas Church was constructed at the period from 1810 to 1827. In 1851-1852 there was a small reconstruction, and under the church ancestral Kochubei burial vault was arranged. At this time was also installed iconostasis, which can be seen today.

The main icon of the church was the icon of St. Nicholas, which was kept in the Poltava Holy Cross Monastery during the construction of the stone church. There were a lot of people who wanted to see the icon. Among the pilgrims was Mariia Gogol-Yanovska, the mother of the great Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol. Kneeling in front of the icon, after the loss of two children, she was prying for a miracle to give a birth to a baby.

After the establishment of Soviet power in the 30s, the forest, near the church was cut down, the massive pillars of marble, stone slab pavement were removed. At the same time princely burial the were looted.

The church was taken away from the believers in 1963. There was organized the atheistic museum. Since 1985 St. Nicholas Church in Dikanka village as an architectural monument became the Department of State Historical Museum. However, it did not save the church from extinction of property: icons of 17-18 centuries, crosses, candlesticks, old books and other valuable relics. Only in 1989, St. Nicholas Church has opened its doors as the temple of God. Thanks to God the main shrine of the temple has remained till our days. The main shrine is the stump on which the icon of St. Nicholas appeared long time ago. But, unfortunately, the icon itself is somewhere in the bowels of Poltava picture gallery.