St Catherine's Cathedral, Kherson

closedas of 2026-10-011781Northern Black Sea coast

Photo: Nataliya Shestakova · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Kherson's first stone church, from which the occupiers removed Potemkin's remains in 2022.

The cathedral was founded on 30 August 1781 and consecrated on 17 May 1786; the design is attributed to Ivan Starov, and construction was directed by Ivan Sitnikov and Ivan Hannibal. In 1791 Grigory Potemkin was buried in the crypt, and beside the cathedral, by his order, lie those killed in the storming of Ochakiv on 6 December 1788 — the "Pantheon of the Kherson Fortress". In 1930 the church was closed and turned into an anti-religious museum, then a warehouse; it was returned to the church at the turn of the 1980s–1990s. In 2022 the russian occupiers dug up and removed Potemkin's remains. The cathedral took direct hits on 3 August 2023, on the night of 27 December 2023 and on 20 December 2024, when a shell pierced the lantern drum beneath the dome.