Kyiv: St. Cyril's and St. Andrew's Churches

Coming from the UK, where all our great cathedrals and abbeys are built of stone with no colour on the exterior save for the stained glass windows, the cathedrals and churches in Ukraine are opulent by comparison, particularly the baroque churches such as St Andrew's (pictured). Beautifully painted in pastel colours and finished with gold leafing it's a truly sumptuous example of rare Elizabethan Baroque.
Within a very short distance there are the equally impressive, St Michael's Monastery and St Sophia's Cathedral (already a UNESCO WHS listing) so I don't quite see why there should be a separate listing, in fact it's a little confusing, just include them in the existing one.
I've been lucky enough to visit all the buildings on the list apart from St Cyril's Church and I was impressed by all of them. At the time of writing, Ukraine is still under attack by Russia and I hope that these magnificent sights in Kyiv manage to escape serious damage.
The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, some way outside the city centre, covers a large area and is made up of multiple churches, bell towers, a cathedral and the monastic caves where the name comes from. If anything the site is even more impressive than the buildings in the city centre and I have no doubt they are all worthy of inclusion.

So Ukraine wants to add 2 more churches to the existing Kyiv WHS: St. Andrew's Church and St. Cyril's Church.  

St. Andrew's Church is located only a few minutes walk from St. Sophia Cathedral, creating a sort of triangle with St. Sophia and St. Michael's, and well within the popular tourist area of Kyiv. So most likely any visitors to Kyiv have been to St. Andrew's, another neutral museum like St. Sophia. 

On the other hand St. Cyril's Church is located somewhat out of the way and may even seem difficult to get to by public transportation, as there is no metro station nearby. This means that you need to know how to take those mini bus, ubiquitous in Kyiv, unless you want to walk. 

But Kyiv is rapidly changing. 

First, while the city was in lockdown and the public transportation was in halt in 2020, they installed a system with metro card for the first time, with which you can now take metros and minibuses. To my amazement, most of those run-down minibuses are now equipped with the electrical card readers.

Second, perhaps deserving even more amazement, the Google Map Direction now works almost perfectly with all the minibuses.

So all you need to do is, wherever you are in Kyiv, to check the Google Map Direction, and it shows you which metro and/or minibues to take to get where you want to go. Just scan your card with the card readers at …

There are three most sacred places for Russian/Eastern European Orthodox Christians to visit: Sergiev-Possad Lavra, Mt. Athos an Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, lavra being the highest in the hierarchy of the Orthodox monasteries. We visited this one on our road trip from Slovakia through Hungary and Romania to Ukraine, to see Chernobyl and some other sites in 2012 - the early stages of our WHS travels where we basically looked at what was around and visited that. We saw the lavra with my classmate from Oxford, Kirill, very religious person, so that added another layer to the whole experience. 

From architectural side of things, it's like any other Orthodox chuches if you've already seen some. The thing that differentiates it is the complex of undergound caves dug by the monks which is now a final resting place for many of them. We had a Russian-language tour with local devout people. Women, wear a long skirt as per other Orthodox monasteries, but they provide wrap skirts if you don't have one. Then you receive a wax candle that will be your only source of light as for some religious reasons, the artificial light is not allowed inside. Warning, don't go if you're claustrofobic, because you're in for a ride. So we entered, a group of about thirty people and we were walking along these small corridors, candles in our hands. There was so much candle waving I was afraid my headscarf would catch on fire. The atmosphere is spooky, aided by the …