Holy Annunciation Cathedral

The Annunciation Cathedral is the main Orthodox church of Kharkiv, Ukraine. The pentacupolar Neo-Byzantine shape with a exclusive 80-meter-tall bell tower was finished on October 2, 1888, from designs by using a neighborhood architect, Mikhail Lovtsov. The church changed into consecrated in 1901, and the sooner Annunciation church become then pulled down. The sweet-striped cathedral supplanted the older Assumption Cathedral as the principle church of Kharkiv and became one in all the most important and tallest churches of the Russian Empire. The icon display screen was once of Carrara marble.

The church was frescoed in a fashion derived from St Vladimir's Cathedral in Kiev. On July 3, 1914 the church have become identified because the metropolis's cathedral. The cathedral turned into closed to worshippers in 1930, but it was reopened for the duration of the German occupation in 1943. The church changed into then in the hands of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and harbored a faculty, though claims abound that it was later used as a warehouse. Since 1946 the cathedral has been the seat of the Kharkiv and Bohodukhiv eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, at the same time as the Intercession Convent has served as the bishop's house. The Ecumenical Patriarch Athanasius III Patelaros and several saintly bishops are buried in the cathedral.