Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/82

 70 K I E F F usual building material ; no less than 64 68 per cent, of the houses existing in 1874 were of wood alone, and 14*75 per cent, of wood and stone. The number of clay huts is no less than 8 -57 per cent. The Old Town or Old Kieff quarter (Starokievskaya Tchast) occupies the highest of the range of hills. It is here that the houses are the most closely built, and that stone structures are most abundant. In some of the prin- .cipal streets as Vladimir s, Vasiltchikoff s buildings of three to five stories, a comparatively rare thing in Russia, have been erected. In the llth century the area was enclosed by earthen ramparts, with bastions and gateways ; but of these the only remnant is the so-called Golden Gate. In the centre of the Old Town stands the cathedral of St Sophia, the oldest cathedral in the Russian empire. The statement frequently repeated that it was a copy of St Sophia s in Constantinople has been shown by Zakrevski to be a mistake. The building measures in length only 118 feet, while its breadth is 173 feet. But if the plan shows no imitation of the great Byzantine church, the de corations of the interior (pictures, mosaics, &c.) indicate direct Byzantine influence. During the occupation of the church by the Uniats in the 17th century these were covered with a coating of whitewash, and a thorough-going restora tion was rendered a matter of necessity ; but the chapel of the Three Pontiffs has been left untouched to show how carefully the old style has been preserved or copied. Among the mosaics is a colossal representation of the Virgin, 15 feet in height, which, like the so-called &quot;indestructible wall&quot; in which it is inlaid, dates from the time of Yaroslaff. It was this prince who founded the church in 1037 in gratitude for his victory over the Petchenegs. His sarcophagus, curiously sculptured with palms, fishes, &c,, is still preserved. The church of St Andrew occupies the spot where, according to Russian tradition, the apostle stood when as yet Kieff was not, and declared that the Kill Plan of Kieff. would become the site of a great city. The present build ing dates only from 1 744-1 f67. The church of the Tithes, restored in 1842, was originally founded in the close of the 10th century by Vladimir in honour of two martyrs whom he had put to death ; and the monastery of St Michael (or of the Golden Heads so called from the fifteen gilde:! cupolas of the original church) claims to have been built in 110S by Svyatopolk II., and restored in 1655 by Bogdan Khmelnitski. Up to 1820 the south-eastern district of Petchersk was the industrial and commercial quarter ; but it has been greatly altered in carrying out fortifications commenced in that year by Nicholas I. Most of the houses are small and old-fashioned. The monastery the Kievo-Petcherskaya is the chief establishment of its kind in Russia; it is j visited every year by about 350,000 pilgrims. From the books of the conventual inns it is shown that shelter is given to 150,000 persons per annum ; and the numbers for whom there is no accommodation is often very great, 72,000, for example, were counted lying under the open sky on the night of 15th August 1872. Of the ten or twelve conventual churches the chief is that of the Assump tion. There are four distinct quarters in the monastery, each under a superior, subject to the archimandrite : the Laura proper or New Monastery, that of the Infirmary, and those of the Nearer and the Further Caves. These caves or catacombs are the most striking characteristic of the place ; the name Petchersk, indeed, is connected with the Russian peshtcliera, a cave. The first series of these caves, dedicated to St Antony, contains about eighty saints tombs; the second, dedicated to St Theodosius, about forty-five. The bodies were formerly exposed to view ; but the pilgrims who now pass through the gloomy galleries, candle in hand, see nothing but the draperies and the inscriptions. Among the more notable names are those of Nestor the chronicler, and Ilia of Murom, the Old