Qualla: Novhorod-Siverskyi

Novhorod-Siverskyi: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Star61, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most famous thing that ever happened at Novhorod-Siverskyi was a defeat. In 1185, Prince Igor rode out from this city on the Desna River against the Cuman horsemen of the southern steppe and lost, and out of that failed campaign came The Tale of Igor's Campaign, the great masterwork of early East Slavic literature. Nearly nine centuries later, a monument to Prince Igor still stands in the town he set out from, and the whole city has taken the poem as its emblem, its historical reserve named in the tale's honor. Few small towns anywhere carry a literary legacy so heavy, or wear it so openly.

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Image: Star61 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Novhorod-Siverskyi: Chronicled Since 1044

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Star61, CC BY-SA 3.0. Novhorod-Siverskyi first appears in the chronicles in 1044, and by 1098 it was the capital of the Siverian Principality, a frontier realm whose task was to shield the Rus' lands against the Cumans and other peoples of the steppe. That role gave the town its enduring fame through ...

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Image: Star61 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Novhorod-Siverskyi: Monasteries on the Bluffs

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Star61, CC BY-SA 4.0. Despite centuries of upheaval, Novhorod-Siverskyi has kept a remarkable stock of architecture, scattered across high river capes divided by ravines. The crown of it all is the Monastery of the Saviour's Transfiguration, once the residence of the Chernihiv metropolitans. Within it...

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Image: Star61 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Novhorod-Siverskyi: A City of Names and Memory

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Star61, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a modest city, Novhorod-Siverskyi has sent a striking number of figures into the wider world. The Cossack Baroque poet and archbishop Lazar Baranovych worked here in the seventeenth century; the writer Panteleimon Kulish and the historian Mykhailo Maksymovych were born here; ...

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Image: Star61 | CC BY-SA 3.0