St. Pantaleon’s Cathedral of Theophany

A small village Theophany is located on the outskirts of modern Kiev. Once this place was called Lazarevschina (Lazarev land), in honor of a monk and a beekeeper Lazarev. In 1803 the first in Kiev, Vicar Bishop Theophan Shiyanov settled here, after which the area was named Theophany. In 1919 the village got the status of a suburban farm. There were patient care institutions, Main Astronomical Observatory, Institute of Botany field testing laboratory. In 2003 a recreation area with ponds, pavilions and interesting landscaping is created in Theophany.

St. Pantaleon’s Nunnery is the main attraction in Theophany. The cloister named Lazarev Nunnery had been known since the first chronicles of Kievan Rus. Firstly it was mentioned in "Hypatian Codex" 1113, " Primary Chronicle" in 1111 and in his "History of the Russian state," Nikolai Karamzin. As legends say Lazarev Nunnery was one of the first nunneries of Rus’. The date of its foundation is the XI century. The nunnery, like many other relics, had survived during the Mongol invasion and had been looted and destroyed. In the period of Kiev diocese vicar Theophan there was a monastery in Lazarevschina (Lazarev land).

St. Pantaleon’s Cathedral meets the faithful on the territory of the monastery. It was built in 1905-1914 at the request of Theophan monastery monks. Prior to that, there were three temples in the monastery: in honor of Archangel’s Michael miracle (warm), wooden, in honor of All Saints (cold), a stone, and in honor of the Mother of God, referred to as "Vladimirskaya" (cold) stone. But all of them were severely dilapidated or lacked sufficient space to accommodate all the pilgrims.

Externally the church is a rose-and-white building with precise and exacting proportions. Unfortunately, the council did not take the faithful for a long time. In 1917, revolution broke out in the country. A lot of temples and monasteries were closed and destroyed. Thank God, Holy Monastery of St. Pantaleon was simply closed. Externally, the building had suffered only during the Second World War. There were firing points under the dome. After the war the cathedral was transferred to the Institute of Mechanics, which conducted the experiments with bombings directed action here, and it caused considerable damage to interior decoration. Only in May 1990, the building of St. Pantaleon’s Cathedral was returned to Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The reconstruction began. In 1993 Holy Protection Nunnery was created there.