Velyki Sorochyntsi

Sorochyntsi grew as a settlement of the Ukrainian left bank in the early seventeenth century. By the end of that century it was a Cossack company centre, and its fairs drew people from the surrounding country. The future hetman Danylo Apostol founded the St Michael's Monastery here in 1670. He later built the Baroque Church of the Transfiguration, completed in 1732, and was buried there two years later. From the middle of the eighteenth century the Sorochyntsi Fair became a notable gathering for trade. The writer Nikolai Gogol, born here in 1809, was baptised in Apostol's church.