Klov Palace: An Eighteenth-Century Guest Palace in Kyiv
Site at a Glance
- Country
- Ukraine
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Russian
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page12 sections
History
Monastery origins and palace construction
Klov Palace is an eighteenth-century palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, commissioned by the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a historic Orthodox monastic institution in the city. Its Baroque design drew on an ornate European style prominent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with elements of Ukrainian folk architecture associated with master builder Stepan Kovnir. The site had much earlier monastic roots: in the last quarter of the eleventh century, Stephen, formerly head of the Lavra monastery, founded a monastery at Klov. After becoming bishop of Volodymyr-Volynskyi, he transferred the monastery and nearby lands to the Lavra.
By the early eighteenth century, Klov served as an outlying estate yard for the Lavra printing house. Several wooden buildings stood there, including a church dedicated to the Deposition of the Virgin Mary’s Robe, an Eastern Orthodox feast commemorating the placing of a relic of her robe in a church in Constantinople. In 1737, Lavra senior monk Hilarion Nehrembetsky made Klov his summer residence. After his death in 1740, the yard returned to the printing house’s management.
The Lavra commissioned a palace in 1753 to accommodate distinguished guests, including members of the Russian royal family visiting the monastery. Architect Pyotr Neelov had designed a two-storey brick building for the site in 1752, and the first storey was complete by 1754. When Neelov could not remain available, the Lavra engaged Kovnir, who completed the second storey in September 1755. Interior finishing continued through 1760, with the building apparently completed around 1761.
The palace grounds were developed alongside the building. A formal garden was planned in 1754, although planting work began in September 1755. A garden master was employed from 1758, and in 1759 Onufrii Litonovskyi took over; his annual contracts were renewed twice. After he left, the garden gradually declined.
Military and institutional use
The palace did not become the royal lodging for which it was intended, and it fell into disrepair. Around 1764, the Lavra printing house may have occupied the building. Catherine II passed through Kyiv in 1787 but stayed at Mariinsky Palace. When the Russo-Turkish War began in 1768, Klov Palace’s uses shifted: it became a provisions store in 1770 and later a military hospital.
In 1776, a Ukrainian military commissariat responsible for army supplies took over the palace without authorization. The Lavra’s 1784 request to regain the property or receive rent was refused, and the palace passed to the state treasury in 1786. During its military use, the church of the Deposition of the Virgin Mary’s Robe was abolished, and its furnishings were transferred to St George’s Monastery in Kozelets.
The gymnasium, 1809–1858
Kyiv’s men’s gymnasium, a type of secondary school, was founded in 1809 and first operated in Podil. A transfer request by Adam Czartoryski, trustee of the Vilna Educational District, led to the palace being assigned for the school in 1810. Military governor Mikhail Miloradovich ordered repairs and adaptation. The premises were formally consecrated on 26 September 1810, when the first 40 pupils began classes. Kyiv’s Higher Gymnasium opened in the palace on 30 January 1812; from 1828 it was known as the First Men’s Gymnasium.
After the 1811 Podil fire, refugees from Podil and residents of Pechersk camped in the gymnasium’s courtyard and garden. Disputes over the building’s use followed, including proposals to turn it into a post office or house nuns from the Florivsky Convent. An imperial charter confirmed the gymnasium’s right to the palace and garden. In 1812, the building temporarily served as a military hospital and a prison for prisoners of war; it returned to the school on 5 July 1813.
In 1833, an exchange of land for the new Kyiv University gave part of the gymnasium’s Klov estate to the city. Streets, including present-day Pylypa Orlyka Street, were laid out on former school land the following year. The gymnasium moved to a larger building in 1857, and the palace hosted Kyiv’s second exhibition of agricultural and craft products. A major fire in 1858 left only the palace’s walls, roof iron, and some timber.
The clergy girls’ school, 1861–1917
After the fire, Metropolitan Isidore sought in 1860 to return the building to the ecclesiastical department for use as a parish church. The educational district instead proposed another men’s gymnasium. In 1862, Alexander II assigned the palace to the clergy for a girls’ school. The school had opened in temporary premises in 1861 for girls from clergy families, then moved into the repaired palace in 1863. The building was consecrated on 22 September, and a school church was established in honor of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women, who in Christian tradition visited Jesus’s tomb after his crucifixion.
School use brought repeated alterations to the building, and work continued through successive projects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The school was dissolved in 1917. In January 1918, a Ukrainian church council met in the palace. From 1918 to 1920 the building housed hospitals and military units, and its former church room became a club in 1920. Polish forces damaged the palace during their occupation of Kyiv in May and June 1920, after which it began to deteriorate.
Preservation and later institutions
Dismantling began in spring 1924 so that the palace could provide bricks, but a commission stopped the work after the later side additions had been removed. A 1926 inspection emphasized the building’s artistic and historical value and the need for restoration. Some officials favored demolition, while preservation advocates Fedor Ernst and Kostiantyn Moshchenko argued for saving it; both described it as a monument of all-Union significance. After several years of efforts to find an institution able to restore the palace, the Institute of the Silicate Industry took it over in 1930. Reconstruction was under way by September 1931 and finished in 1932. A proposal to add two more floors was rejected in 1931.
The Institute of the Silicate Industry closed in 1936. In 1940, the palace housed the Ukrainian Geological Administration and physical-chemical and oil-exploration laboratories. After the Second World War, it became the home of the Ministry of Geology of the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent republic of the Soviet Union encompassing most of present-day Ukraine.
A proposal to establish a museum of the 1941–45 war in the palace in 1967 was not carried out. A renewed decision in 1973 led to repairs and restoration, and the Ukrainian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War opened there in 1974. Great Patriotic War was the Soviet-era name for the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. The museum moved to the Dnipro-side Memorial of Glory in 1981, and the Museum of the History of Kyiv opened in the palace in 1982. The city transferred it to state ownership in 2003, and the museum later moved to Ukrainian House.
Between 1994 and 1996, the Cabinet of Ministers sought to transfer the building for a military college and the Supreme Court. Reconstruction for the court took place from 2003 to 2009, and the Supreme Court has been based in the palace since 2009. Klov Palace is protected in Ukraine as an immovable monument of national significance.
Remains
The palace building
Form and exterior
The brick palace has a U-shaped plan, shaped by additions made over time. It began as a two-storey building and had acquired a third storey by 1863. Its architecture combines Baroque features with Ukrainian folk elements and forms that became widespread later in the eighteenth century. The exterior has rusticated wall bands, a treatment that emphasizes masonry joints or surface texture, and pilasters, shallow column-like projections. Window surrounds are topped by semicircular or segmental pediments, the crowning features above openings; some are triangular and others have a curved profile.
Early arrangement and interiors
A description from 1769 called the palace a two-storey stone building, whitewashed outside, with an iron roof and six brick chimneys. Most of the ground-floor surface was brick, while the upper floor had wooden flooring; ceilings consisted of unplastered boards. Two passage vestibules on the lower floor contained stairs to the upper level. There, a hall with four windows had wall panels extending from floor to window level, roughly painted walls, and a painted ceiling. Wooden galleries ran along both the front and courtyard sides. The front gallery, supported by four posts, followed the vestibules, while the courtyard gallery extended along the building’s full length. Stairs led to a small cellar beneath the palace.
A description from 1810 counted up to 11 rooms on the ground floor and 10 on the upper floor of the main block. Following adaptation for the gymnasium, the building had 10 rooms below and eight rooms and a hall above; side vestibules and wings became accommodation for teachers and staff. Interior decoration included a painted ceiling in the great hall. Painter and gilder Benedikt Friedrich contracted to work on it in 1757. In 1760, icon painter Kondrat Andreyev was hired to paint on canvas, but early 1761 records show only part of the agreed work was complete, leaving its final outcome uncertain. Tile makers Petro Baranov and Semen Rodin also worked inside the palace.
Later alterations
West-side extensions begun in 1865 changed the palace from a rectangular plan to its U-shaped form. Later work in 1873–75 and 1878 added side extensions to the main facade and a central third-storey section, initially only 2.45 metres high. In 1901, that level was raised, the attic above the main facade was made into bedrooms, and the central part of the main block was extended farther into the courtyard. The school church’s ceiling and choir were raised, while the dining room, recreation hall, and vestibule were enlarged. The main staircase was moved and replaced with stone stairs; stone stairs had also been added in 1897.
A hospital wing was built on the north side in 1900. Initially one storey high, it gained two more storeys in 1908. Wooden floors were replaced with parquet in 1909, and electric lighting took the place of gas lighting in 1910. The reconstruction carried out for the Supreme Court between 2003 and 2009 altered the facade and removed the palace’s distinctive interiors and characteristic room arrangement.
Garden and estate features
The formal garden included an orangery, a building for growing citrus trees, which supplied orange, mandarin, and lemon saplings to the garden at the Tsar’s Palace. Plantings included pear, apple, plum, and cherry trees, as well as walnuts and grapevines; one record counted 2,125 trees. A lime-tree avenue also formed part of the grounds. The trees were later cut down as Kyiv expanded and new buildings were constructed. Estate facilities included a windmill built near the palace in 1758 and a well installed in the grounds in 1760.
