Kozelets

Kozelets grew from a fortified settlement known in the age of Kyivan Rus' into a trading centre on the important road between Kyiv and Chernihiv in northern Ukraine. Under the Cossack Hetmanate it became a company town of the Pereiaslav and later Kyiv regiments. Its importance is reflected in the great Baroque Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin, designed by Andrei Kvasov and Ivan Hryhorovych-Barskyi.

Kozelets received Magdeburg rights in 1656. In 1662 a Cossack council held here elected Yakym Somko as hetman, amid the struggles over leadership that followed Bohdan Khmelnytskyi's death. A Tatar raid partly destroyed the town in 1679. Empress Elizabeth visited on her pilgrimage to Kyiv in 1744, and the town later became a district centre under Russian rule.