Description of the attraction
The Alexander Church is the oldest Catholic church in Kiev today. Of course, before that there were churches in the city, but they were wooden and often suffered from fires. This went on for quite a long time, until at the beginning of the 19th century the Roman Catholic community of the city decided to erect a more solid building.
The church got its name thanks to Emperor Alexander I, to whom Kiev Catholics applied for a building permit. The emperor agreed to the construction of the church with only one condition - to give the temple the name of his heavenly patron. Unfortunately, there is still no consensus on the name of the architect who designed the church. Some historians believe that it was the Dominican architect Pylor, while others, referring to the high cost of his project, attribute the authorship to the St. Petersburg architect Visconti. Still others argue that Visconti's drawings inexplicably disappeared and the temple was built by the Kiev architect Mehovich, and these are not all versions.
One way or another, but the Alexander Church, for the construction of which funds were collected for more than one year from the Polish gentry (25 kopecks for each serf), was solemnly laid in 1817. The construction dragged on for years, and only in 1847 the Alexander Church, built in the traditions of the then popular classicism, was consecrated and began to perform its functions.
Over the century and a half of its existence, the Alexander Church has repeatedly found itself in the center of events. It was here that patriotic songs were sung during the Polish uprisings, it was here that the world famous artist Kazimir Malevich was baptized. Having survived the years of Soviet power as a planetarium, a branch of a library and a house of scientific atheism, in the 90s the church was returned to the Catholic community of the city of Kiev, was restored and even honored the visit of Pope John Paul II.
