Zymne Holy Mountain Monastery, Zymne
A fortified monastery above the Luha just outside Volodymyr: the five-domed Dormition Church of 1495, walls with towers, caves and the Zymne icon.
According to tradition, the monastery was founded in 1001 by Prince Volodymyr, who set up a winter residence and two wooden churches here — so says the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine; castles.com.ua traces the first document on the monastery to 1458, and travels.in.ua names 1073. In 1495 Fedir Czartoryski, prince of Lutsk, replaced the wooden Dormition Church with a five-domed masonry one and surrounded the monastery with walls with four corner towers and a gate tower (castles.com.ua); from then on the monastery was the family burial place of the Czartoryskis, who opened a printing house and a school here (Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine). The Trinity Church is dated to 1465–1475 or to the 15th century in general. Beneath the Dormition Cathedral are caves with the underground church of St Varlaam; the side passages are blocked by collapses. In 1686 the monastery passed to the Basilians, in 1724 the starosta Michał Czacki rebuilt the cathedral as a two-domed Roman Catholic church, and in 1790 the monastery was closed; it was revived as an Orthodox one in 1892. In 1914, 16 nuns and 103 novices lived here; under Soviet rule a tractor brigade was stationed on the grounds. Nuns from Korets returned in 1991, and in 1996 the monastery became stauropegial; in 2010 it had 40 sisters (Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine). The Zymne icon of the Mother of God, by tradition brought by Princess Anna from Constantinople in 988, was kept in Korets in 1966–1995.
A working convent; 56 Monastyrska Street, tel. +380 97 871 7790 (travels.in.ua, 22.02.2025). From Volodymyr — by minibus or on foot (castles.com.ua); in the caves visitors are admitted only as far as the church of St Varlaam. Nearby is the Dormition Cathedral in Volodymyr.