Saint Sophia Cathedral
— — a thousand years of gold and blue.
Not only on a wall.
“Founded by Yaroslav the Wise in the eleventh century, modelled on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and rebuilt in white-and-green Baroque after the seventeenth century. The interior still carries the original mosaics — an Orans Mother of God in the apse, eleventh-century saints in the dome. UNESCO listed it together with the Lavra in 1990. The bell tower is teal, the walls are chalk, the gold catches the river light.
Saint Sophia Cathedral, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Saint Sophia stands in the upper town of Kyiv on a high plateau above the Dnipro River, in the Shevchenkivskyi district. Construction began in 1037 under the Kyivan prince Yaroslav the Wise as the seat of the Metropolitan of Kyiv, modelled after Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The complex received its current white walls and green-and-gold Baroque domes during a rebuild between 1685 and 1707 under Hetman Ivan Mazepa. UNESCO inscribed Saint Sophia together with the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra as a World Heritage Site in 1990.
The interior still holds the eleventh-century mosaics that survived nine centuries of fire, sack, and Soviet repurposing. In the central apse, an Orans Mother of God stands six metres tall on a gold ground, hands raised, blue robe deepened by time. Around the dome, fragments of the original cycle of saints and Christ Pantocrator remain. Frescoes of Yaroslav's family along the walls are the only surviving secular portraits of the Kyivan Rus' court.
The cathedral has functioned as a state museum since 1934 rather than an active liturgical church, which has preserved the mosaics through the twentieth century. The grounds are open daily except Thursday, with the bell tower offering a viewpoint over the upper town toward Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery five hundred metres north. Photography inside the cathedral is restricted to protect the mosaic substrate; tickets are sold at the gate on Volodymyrska Street.