History of the Restoration of the Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir-Volynsky in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The preservation of cultural heritage is an urgent problem of our time. The formation of new conceptual approaches and methods aiming to preserve historical monuments is still taking place, while state institutions are developing their working methodologies. So, one should take into account the important, instructive and useful experience of the specialists and researchers of the last third of the 19th and early 20th centuries in preserving a number of architectural masterpieces. Examples of religious buildings (including pre-Mongolian churches of Kievan Rus’), unique in their antiquity, can be found in present-day Ukraine. At the end of the 19th century restorators took care of the 12th-century Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir-Volynsky (or Volodymyr-Volynskyi), Volyn region. Eventually, the restoration of the Cathedral was complete in 1900. The issues concerning the 1886–1890 research and the following restoration of the Vladimir-Volynsky Dormition Cathedral as a prominent 12th-century architectural monument would attract domestic and foreign researchers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Some of these issues have been outlined by P. Rappoport, L. Gnatyuk-Sosna, L. Pribega, V. Lisovsky, F. Mandzyuk, N. Logvin, S. V. Gavrilyuk. However, such topics as the conception of the restoration and the role of the architects A. V. Prakhov and G. I. Kotov are still poorly known. This article aims at contributing to the research into these and other problems in the field.