Description of the attraction
The Dominican Church of St. Nicholas is located in the city of Kamenets-Podolsk, at st. Dominican, 3. This is the oldest temple in the city, and it was erected at the highest point of the city. There is no reliable information about the time of construction, but for the first time the temple was mentioned in records from 1372, three years after the proclamation of Gregory XI (1329 - 1378) by Pope of Rome and the creation of the Podolsk episcopate, the center of which was Kamenets.
The temple was originally built of wood. But the building did not stand even for half a century: due to a strong fire in 1420, it was completely destroyed. And in the 16th century, under the leadership of a representative of the Potocki family, a stone church was erected, consecrated in honor of St. Nicholas. Further, the temple was reconstructed into a mosque in honor of Rabiya Gul-Nush - the wife of the then ruling sultan Haseki. This happened in 1672, when the Turks captured the city of Kamenets-Podolsk. But this practically did not make architectural changes, then only a fountain, a minbar (a pulpit for reading the Friday sermon) and a tombstone in the name of the daughter of an Ottoman high-ranking official were installed on the territory.
In 1754, Count M. F. Pototsky financed the complete reconstruction of the temple. Then the coat of arms of the Potocki family was placed on the facade and a sculpture was installed depicting a dog with a torch - the emblem of the Dominicans, also called “the dogs of the Lord”.
After the Right-Bank Ukraine came under the rule of the Russian Empire (1793), Empress Catherine II signed a decree on the creation of the Podolsk episcopate, but already the Orthodox Church. Until the beginning of the twentieth century. in the building of the temple were located: a Catholic seminary, a tax collection office, a drawing school, a library, a museum. And during the Soviet era, it was closed and used as a prison, later as an archive, then as a warehouse. Another restoration began in 1998 under the leadership of the Pauline fathers.
