Church of the Tithes
church in Kyiv
The Church of the Tithes or Church of the Dormition of the Virgin (Ukrainian: Десятинна Церква, romanized: Desiatynna Tserkva) was the first stone church in Kyiv. Originally it was built by the order of Grand Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr) the Great between 989 and 996 by Byzantine and local workers at the site of death of martyrs Theodor the Varangian and his son Johann. It was originally named the "Church of Our Lady", in honor of the Dormition of the Theotokos. The church was ruined in 1240 during the Siege of Kiev by Mongol armies of Batu Khan.
Vladimir set aside a tithe of his income and property to finance the church's construction and maintenance, which gave the church its popular name.
On an initiative of the Metropolitan of Kyiv Eugene Bolkhovitinov, the church was rebuilt in the mid-19th century, but in 1928 it was once again destroyed by the Soviet regime.
Medieval church
By Vladimir's order, the remains of his grandmother Princess Olga, the first Christian ruler of Rus', were reburied in this church. Vladimir and his wife, Princess Anna, the sister of Byzantine Emperor Basil II, were also buried in the Church of the Tithes.
The church was seriously damaged in the fire of 1017 and was rebuilt by Yaroslav and rededicated in 1039. In 1044, Yaroslav would make the church a mausoleum for Kyivan princes, having the remains of Yaropolk and Oleg baptised and interred.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Church of the Tithes” as church in Kyiv. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as church in Kyiv. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q618562. Authority coordinates are 50.458, 30.517. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1240, 1928, 1017 and 1039.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Church of the Tithes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.