The Church of Mykola Naberezhny was the only Kyiv church where services did not stop in Soviet times until 1960. In 1992, services were resumed here. For some time, the church performed the functions of the cathedral church of the UAOC in Kyiv. Belongs to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
History
According to popular belief, the ancient temple in honor of St. Nicholas was erected in the 11th century near the place on the bank of the river, where, according to legend, a baby drowned, but was miraculously saved.
The first known written sources indicate that already in the middle of the 16th century there was a wooden parish church of Mykola Naberezhny. After the fire of 1677, the church was destroyed and a new wooden church was built in its place. On the plan of Kyiv in 1695, the church of Mykola Naberezhny is depicted as a wooden one-bay church with one altar apse. At the end of the 1750s, major repairs were carried out at the expense of the Cossacks of the Kyiv and Nizhyn regiments. Despite the construction of a new stone temple that began in the 1770s, the old wooden one was dismantled only at the end of the 18th century.
The new brick church was built in 1772-1775 according to the project of the Ukrainian architect Ivan Hryhorovych-Barskyi with voluntary donations. Perhaps he was inspired by the church in the village of Lemeshi, near Kozelets, the project of which was ordered from him by Natalya Razumovska in order to implement it on the grave of her husband, the Lemeshi Cossack Hryhoriy Rozum.
Confessional paintings, metric books and clerical information of the church (from 1737 to 1919) are stored in the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Legends
According to popular belief, the temple in honor of Nicholas the Wonderworker was built near the place where the baby drowned. The legend tells about a couple who went to Vyshhorod to pay homage to the relics of St. Boris and Hleb and returned by boat along the Dnieper to Kyiv. During the trip, the woman fell asleep and released the child into the water. Out of desperation, the parents turned to St. Nikolay And a miracle happened - the parents soon found the child alive and unharmed in St. Sophia's Cathedral near the icon of St. Nicholas Mokry. Over the centuries, the icon of St. Nicholas the Wet was recognized as the main shrine of St. Sophia Cathedral and the oldest miraculous icon in Russia.