Old St Elijah's Church, Toporivtsi
A stone defensive church of 1560 in the Moldavian manner: loopholes instead of windows.
The triconch church with three hidden domes under a single roof was built in 1560 — sources name as its founder the Moldavian voivode Miron Barnovschi of the Movilă family, although he himself is dated to the 1620s, and local historians do not hide this contradiction. The church was built in the Turkish era as a fortress: walls 1.35 m thick, embrasures on the exedrae and the apse, a parapet with loopholes along the whole perimeter of the roof. The entrance is unusually on the north side, and on the wall is an inscription in Old East Slavic. It is said that after the Battle of Khotyn Bohdan Khmelnytsky called here with his officers. 360 m away stands the new St Elijah's Church of 1910–1914: permission for it was given by Franz Joseph, and its bells rang for the first time to announce the start of the First World War.
The old church has been used only occasionally since 1914; check its current condition on the spot. The village is 20 km from Chernivtsi.