Chyhyryn

Chyhyryn [Чигирин; Čyhyryn]. Map: IV-13. City (2007 pop 10,600) and raion center in Cherkasy oblast, located on the Tiasmyn River in the Dnipro Upland. Chyhyryn was a fortified winter station of the Cossacks in the first half of the 16th century. In the second half it was the center of Chyhyryn county. In 1592 the town was granted Magdeburg law and began to grow. In 1638–47 the head of Chyhyryn county was Bohdan Khmelnytsky. In 1648 Chyhyryn became the residence of Hetman B. Khmelnytsky, the center of the Chyhyryn regiment, and the capital of the Hetman state. After the capital was moved to Baturyn in 1663 and Chyhyryn was sacked by the Turks in 1678, the town declined. Khmelnytsky's palace, the town hall, and the Church of the Savior, which were built in the second quarter of the 17th century, have not survived. The ruins of the fortifications can still be found on the Castle Hill. Beginning in 1797, Chyhyryn was a county town in Kyiv gubernia. The Motronynskyi Trinity Monastery was built near Chyhyryn in 1627, at first housing only monks and then, beginning in 1735, nuns. The monastery was closed down by Soviet authorities, but was returned to the Orthodox church in 1991 and reinstated as a women’s monastery. In 1843 and 1845 Taras Shevchenko visited the town and dedicated some poems and paintings to it.

Chyhyryn has some small industry, including a food industry, a leather-haberdashery factory, a furniture factory, and an arts and crafts factory. It has a regional archeological museum and a museum of Hetman B. Khmelnytsky. The Chyhyryn Historic and Cultural Preserve (which includes also the village of Subotiv) was established in 1989 and was granted national status in 1995. The process of reconstructing Chyhyryn’s several historic monuments, including Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s residence, the Church of SS Peter and Paul, and the Petro Doroshenko bastion was completed in 2009.

[This article was updated in 2011.]