Maniava Skete
A Carpathian monastery of 1606, the "Ukrainian Athos" above the Maniavka.
The skete was founded in 1606 by Yov Kniahynytsky, a monk returned from Athos (the ESU gives 1608); the first cells and church were put up in 1611–1612. In 1620 the Patriarch of Constantinople granted the house stauropegion status, and in 1628 the Kyiv council made it the protos over 556 monasteries of three voivodeships; in the 17th century about 200 monks lived here. The walls with three towers were raised in 1620–1621; the treasury tower stands 22.7 m. In 1676 the skete was burned by the Turks and Tatars, and in 1785 it was closed by the Austrian authorities; the Bohorodchany iconostasis by Yov Kondzelevych of 1698–1705, from here, is kept by the National Museum in Lviv. In 1980–1998 a museum worked here; the monastery was returned to the church in 1998–1999, and since then the wooden Exaltation of the Holy Cross cathedral (1998) and the church of the Annunciation (2011) are in use again. Above the stream is the Blessed Stone, in whose grotto the monks hid from the Tatars. Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Jan III Sobieski and Ivan Franko came here.
A working monastery: modest dress; photos in churches by permission.