Kiev Pechersk Lavra is famous Kiev place. .jpg) Best Kiev Apartment continues to offer articles about cultural Kiev places. One of the famous places is Kiev is Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Pechersk Lavra means Kiev Cave Monastery in Ukrainian and that is exactly how this holy complex began, when in 1051 Saint Anthony took up residence in one of the caves on this hilly outcrop. Over the centuries the Monastery took on increasing significance as a religious centre until it was considered Orthodox Christianity's equivalent of Rome or Jerusalem. Today tourists will want to pencil in a whole day for this amazing site, which spans a whopping 28 hectares. There's not only the famous near and far caves to be visited, with their mummified monks, but also the Dormition Cathedral, the Great Lavra Belltower, and several interesting museums such as the Museum of Folk Decorative Art.
The Kiev Pechersk monastery ensemble (later the lavra, as the largest and richest monasteries were usually called) took shape over a period of nine centuries and consists of the Upper Part and the Nearer and Further Caves.
The Kiev Pechersk monastery arose in the eleventh century on the site of the Further Caves, where the underground Church of the Nativity of the Virgin and a number of cells were built. A little later an above-ground wooden church was erected. The Kiev Pechersk monastery's popularity grew from year to year.
In the second half of the eleventh century Prince Iziaslav, son ofYaroslav the Wise, gave up a large parcel of land to it, and another of his sons, Sviatoslav, gave a hundred grivny of gold (about sixteen kilograms), quite a significant sum at that time.
In 1926 the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra was declared a state historical and cultural museum. At present there are a number of museums on its territory. It is a museum of Ukrainian traditional decorative artwith large collections of pottery, embroidery, weaving, carpetry, and national costumes.
A museum of historical treasures contains unique articles of jewelry from ancient times to the nineteenth century; a museum of theatre art, with a large collection of models, scene sketches, and costumes by Ukrainian stage designers; and a museum of books and printing, containing ancient eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts and printed books from the sixteenth century to the present. back 
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