The Holy Trinity Cathedral, towering above the city center, is the main Orthodox temple in Dnipropetrovsk. Its majestic light building, crowned with green cupolas, is reckoned among the city's most valuable historical and architectural monuments.
In 1837, the cathedral was built on the place of the city's first wooden church, which was built in the late 18th century and then fell into decay. Temple’s project was designed by well-known architects from St. Petersburg, but its implementation was long postponed because of a lack of money: the city just finished building the Transfiguration Cathedral and was working on the new Assumption Church.
The construction of the Trinity Church started eight years after laying its foundation stone, when a local industrialist took over its financing and allocated a substantial sum of money.
At first, the Holy Trinity Cathedral looked very modest and differed considerably from the modern one. The temple was small and had no belfry, no service buildings, and no forged fence. The bell tower, which is the city’s tallest structure now, was built only in the 1860s. Soon, a special corridor linked the bell tower and the church building, thereby almost doubling its area.
In the first third of the 20th century, the Trinity Cathedral was closed by Soviet authorities. At the same time, it lost its bells and cupolas, and numerous shops, workshops, and storehouses were situated behind the church’s fencing. Its walls were cut through, and the temple was turned into a storehouse. The Cathedral’s interior, in particular its magnificent paintings, was severely damaged at that time.
The Trinity Cathedral was reopened only with the outbreak of World War II. The damaged building was gradually restored: bells were returned to the belfry, walls were plastered and whitewashed, cupolas were painted green, and golden crosses began to shine atop them again. Later, restoration works continued inside the cathedral, with the result that valuable paintings that escaped destruction were restored.
