Kozelets Jewish Cemetery

The exact period of the cemetery’s establishment is unknown. Given the oldest tombstone dates to the early 19th century it can be inferred the cemetery was founded in that era. It first appears on Russian maps of the region from the 1870s.

The town was home to such famous Jewish figures as: Soviet actor and singer Mark Naumovich Bernes (whose real name was Menakhem-Man Neukh-Shmuylov Neumann), who was born in Nizhyn in 1911; Yiddish-language poet Mani Leib (born Mani Leib Brahinsky), who was born in Nizhyn in 1883; and Boris Aronson, American theatre artist, painter, sculptor.

St Nicholas Cathedral is an early Baroque Orthodox cathedral. The present church, which probably dates from 1650-1660, was built on the site of an earlier wooden church at the expense of Ivan and Vasyl Zolotarenko. The Baroque cathedral became an architectural model for other churches of the same style throughout Ukraine. From 1920 to 1939, the cathedral was used as a warehouse. After 1946, until 1990, it housed a local cultural centre.

The Cathedral of the Virgin, built between 1991 and 2005, is one of the largest Greek-Catholic churches in the Kyiv region. The architect of the church was Yuriy Losytsky, a renowned Ukrainian architect-restorer.