Barvinkove Palette — forgotten tourist pearls

In connection with the illegal invasion of russia on the territory of Ukraine and with the author's consent, 5374.03 UAH was transferred to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

We are the public organization "Patriots of Barvinkove region". Our goal is to restore the tourist route through the Barvinkove territorial community, namely to create an excursion route through the city center, where historically were located a soap factory, an extensive network of underground tunnels connecting cultural, domestic and educational objects and extending beyond the city limits.

Currently, the city of Barvinkove has the following tourist points:

The tomb of Maria Raievska-Ivanova. She was the first woman certified artist in the Russian Empire at that time. Born and buried in Havrylivka village. She was friends with the Beketov family and laid the foundations of drawing for Oleksiy Beketov, who developed the modern historical center of Kharkiv and whose name is borne by the Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy;

Local History Museum of Barvinkove District, which displays paintings, household items from different eras, Scythian stone sculptures, etc.

But that's not all the exclusives we have! There are many more in Barvinkove city!

In 1902, a cathedral with three altars was consecrated on the central square of Barvinkove settlement: the first main one in honor of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, the second of St. George the Victorious, the third of John the Theologian. Unfortunately, this monument has not survived to our times. In the 1930s the cathedral was blown up by a local resident. To this day, photographs with panoramic views of the city have been preserved showing the beautiful cathedral towering above it. Height and length 51 meters 47 cm, width 24 meters 85 cm. The bell tower was equipped with a mechanical clock.

The architect of the cathedral was Vladimir Nemkin, who gave the cathedral a Byzantine style. The cathedral was painted in the characteristic combination of the giant volume of the central dome with four smaller ones in the special form of their tops and window openings. The cathedral's facades resembled Byzantine buildings with horizontal alternations of layers of dark and light wall treatment, giving greater expressiveness to the very massive structure. This massiveness of the temple required an "antithesis" in the form of a high bell tower, which was to hold the rather uniform, sometimes two-story relief of the settlement center, descending from south to the river and framed from the north by a high hill with windmills. Also in Barvinkove appeared the first steam mill, the remains of which have survived to our times.

Contemporary with the cathedral in Barvinkove are the Zoryan Church (1901, Kholodna Hora, architect Vladimir Nemkin) and the Annunciation Cathedral (1903, Central Market).

What are our plans?

In 2018, tourists already visited Barvinkove district, but refused the route because there were no convenient roads for travel between cities. Now this issue has been resolved.

The same year, the city community initiated the creation of an exact copy of the Intercession Cathedral at a scale of 1:100 by 3D printing with the smallest detail, coloring, creating a base with lighting and a vacuum transparent dome. The finished model is planned to be installed permanently as an active exposition at: Barvinkove city, Tsentralna Street 9. This is the place where the cathedral stood until 1934.

Now the district house of culture is located here. By agreement with the department of culture and tourism, the cathedral model will be supplemented by museum exhibits on this theme (photos of the cathedral in working and semi-destroyed state, restored drawings, paintings depicting the cathedral, recipes for preparing the mixture for building the cathedral walls, etc.).

The mystery remains the locations of the mechanical clock construction, bell casting, adding bull ink to the building mortar used instead of cement at that time, what treasures are hidden in the underground tunnels ...

One of the local legends is connected with the destruction of the cathedral:

When a group came by order of the communist authorities to liquidate the cathedral, a small community led by the cathedral's rector stood in its defense. To suppress the population's morale and prevent provocations against government representatives, they staged a demonstrative execution of the cathedral's rector. He was lifted to the bell tower and demonstratively thrown down before the eyes of the crowd. But the rector managed to make a short speech, trying to guide people to the true path. He warned that if they destroy the cathedral, the entire Barvinkove region will decline and there will be no prosperity until the cathedral is restored.

It was in Barvinkove region that Henry Ford built his factory for producing various machines because it was here that Germans massively resettled during Catherine II's time.

Analyzing historical facts from 1934 to 2021 there really was no prosperity. Everything that was built worked or existed for a short time, the city has no residential building higher than 5 floors, they built a brick factory - dismantled, food factory - ruins, Sokolnyky aviation factory branch - ruins, incubator, slaughterhouse ...

To create a cathedral model, its drawings are necessary, but work with museum collections and archives did not yield positive results. Remembering Maria Raievska-Ivanova's student Mr. Beketov, we approached the architecture department of O.M. Beketov KHNUME, inspired by the idea of creating a cathedral model. Over six months, 3rd year students created a coursework, namely recreated drawings from photographs. They determined its dimensions, building style, recreated the smallest details and presented it in 3D graphics.

Let's try together to restore the history of Barvinkove city and raise funds for tourism development in the community!