The Many Faces of Radomysl Castle 

Radomysl Castle is a historical and cultural site which combines many important historical roles; it is a fortification, an old paper manufactory, a museum of the Ukrainian home icons, a landscape park, a sculpture park, a water monument, etc. Radomysl Castle is a participant and the first award winner in Ukraine for the project of the Council of Europe called Via Regia - Cultural Route of the Council of Europe.  This castle is one of the most fascinating tourist attractions on the cultural route which used to run across eight European countries as long as 1,500 years ago. (Fig.1)

It is hard to believe that just five years ago this place was only the ruin of an old mill bought by a well-known Ukrainian medical doctor, singer and social activist Olga Bogomolets in Radomysl, Zhytomyr Oblast with a hope to establish the world’s first museum of the Ukrainian home icon...

For fifteen years now, Olga Bogomolets has been collecting the Ukrainian home icons, most of which came from the flea markets. Together with other like-minded people, she brought back to life what seemed to be hopelessly damaged icons painted by the Ukrainian artists back in the 17th-19th centuries. Over time the collection of icons grew in size so that it did not fit in the home basement and a whole separate building was needed as the collection numbered over five thousand items. In search of such building, the collector came to Radomysl, where a piece of land with a tumbledown old water mill was put up for sale... The place was a bit distant, 86 kilometres from Kyiv, but it was inexpensive and looked cosy.

The new owner had no other plans but creating a museum of home icons. No construction project, no business plan, no design work plan, no general contractor... So, the works looked as follows. After the mill – neglected for many years and turned into a dump – was bought, it took three months and 60 garbage trucks, tractors and carts to clean the surrounding area. Then they made a concrete slab road to the future museum, pumped the sludge from the river bottom with a pump vehicle, elevated the ground level of the islands which used to be regularly flooded, and reinforced the trees to prevent them from being pulled out of the swamp... There was no money to do more work in the first year...

The invited architects either asked for an incredibly high fee for their services or shrugged their shoulders when they saw that the building had no foundation but sat on a rock! They proposed to lift the building with lifting jacks and put the foundation under it, or build concrete supports and concrete ceilings between the floors, or asked for the museum reconstruction plan which did not exist at that time. There was no understanding how the museum will operate, there was only a dream and belief that it must be done. So, they did what needed to be done first and what could be done with the limited funding, relying on own resources... Only some enthusiasts – well-known artists and architects, including Anatoliy Haydamaka, Oleksandr Polischuk, Larysa Skoryk and Herbert Pasterk (an Austrian architect) – offered their free consultations and professional advice. Art restorer Viktor Moskalets supervised the art and technical aspects during the construction of the bridges and the tower.

The next year, they began to restore the walls of the former mill and rebuild the tower. When they became curious why the former mill had loopholes instead of windows, they found out that the water mill was built in the late 19th or early 20th century on the foundation of a much older building – the paper mill that belonged to the Monastery of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. The manufactory, surrounded by water on all sides and protected from enemies, was the oldest in central and eastern Ukraine. When they researched the history, they found out that the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Archimandrite Elisey Pletenetsky founded the first factory in central Ukraine on this site in 1612 to produce paper from hemp, flax and nettle. The fortification was erected here on the granite rock surrounded by water. The manufactured paper was transported on rafts down the rivers of Myka, Teterev and Dnipro to the Lavra monastery. The Book of Hours, the first book of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, was printed on paper made in Radomysl as soon as in 1616. The paper mill was destroyed in some 80 years, at the time of the Ruin, and it was restored only now, 300 years later. Viktor Moskalets made the drawings of the equipment for the paper mill, using old prints.

Almost one year was spent to gradually replace the wooden poles that supported the floors and restore the lost brickwork on the ruined central part of the tower. The renovation and restoration works were carried out according to the ancient construction technologies. All the elements required for the restoration were made by hand and according to the ancient methods. The new oak pillars, doors, benches and tables for the refectory hall were hand-made by the local carpenter Victor Rudenko in the same way they did it 100 or 200 years ago.

In the third year, they finally put up the roof on the old mill building and put in windows. Gradually, the sense was coming of what the future museum should look like. The endless quest continued: how, without changing the historical building plan and without pulling down the existing walls, to make it so that the various functions of the future castle museum do not interfere with each other, where to put the ladder, the washrooms, the oven... In the fourth year, the boiler and the heating system were installed, so the interior works could continue in winter. Inside the building, workers mostly ground the old stones and bricks by hand and then white-washed the walls where the icons were supposed to be. So, in five years time, the castle interiors of 17th-19th centuries were completely restored. (Fig.2) 

The pearl of Radomysl Castle is the world’s only museum of the Ukrainian home icon with its exhibition called The Soul of Ukraine displaying more than 5,000 icons of the 17th-19th centuries from all regions of Ukraine, which now make the private collection of Olga Bogomolets. The icons moved into the museum on the fourth year of restoration; so the exhibition could begin to take shape. The next year was spent arranging the exhibition halls: the hall of home iconostasis on canvases from the central Ukraine, and the hall of “social realism” – mutilated and damaged icons, icons with poked out eyes, shot through, turned into trunks, tablecloths and window shutters. Later, another hall was set up to present the psycho-ethnographic regional characteristics of Ukraine: home icons painted by craftsmen from Kiev, Poltava, Chernihiv, Polissia, Siver, Galicia, Hutsul, Transcarpathia, and Luhansk regions... Hutsul travel folding altarpieces, Cossack arks, professional baroque icons, icons carved in wood, cast in metal, painted on glass. Here one can find icons for all needs: one was used by three generations of midwives in the 18th-19th centuries to cut the umbilical cord, other icons were helpful for impregnation, childbirth, breastfeeding, protecting the children who died before they were baptised. Next came the ceremonial hall with the icons that used to be in churches but, after those churches were destroyed, they were kept at homes; and the hall of icons painted in tempera. It took more than a year to arrange the last of the displays. It is the Holy Mother Hall which exhibits 120 unique icons of the Mother of God. Catholic, Greek Catholic and Orthodox icons are placed side by side in this museum. A unique item in the museum is a roadside stone icon of Saint Nicholas from the 17th century. It still bears the imprints and energy of thousands of hands and it is never cold, even in wintertime.

“I have special feelings for this castle museum. In fact, it is not a museum, for me. It is a new home for my ‘orphaned’ icons. Most of them were abandoned, thrown out to the flea market, and only here, after many years of wandering, they have finally found their home and they returned to the people to restore the historical memory of our nation, destroyed by the Soviets. A lot of work is still ahead: making a catalogue, certification, and continuous restoration. I have a dream that soon the castle museum will begin to host the international cultural and historical conferences, and many people will be able to feel the true Soul of Ukraine,” says Olga Bogomolets, the founder of this historical and cultural site. (Fig.3,4) 

Today, Radomysl Castle is a majestic piece of architecture with 2,500 square meters in space. The architectural ensemble was built in fortification style – inherently ascetic, grand and functional. The building is really impressive for the fact that it stands without a foundation, built into a rock that plunges deep into earth for miles, surrounded by waters of the Myka River.

A landscape park, waterfalls, cosy islands connected by stone bridges, natural healing springs, a unique garden of irises with more than 60 varieties of blooming irises presented by the world famous iris grower Igor Khorosh – all these things give a special sense of harmony with the nature and environment. Here one can see a monument that floats in the river. This is the only modern monument in this place, the monument to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Archimandrite Elisey Pletenetsky, the founder of the paper mill, made by sculptor Vlad Volosenko. (Fig.5)

Already in the first year of its operation, Radomysl Castle became an exemplary private museum, very popular and frequented by visitors. In only one and a half year, this historical site was visited by nearly twenty thousand people. Today, besides the museum, the castle has an exhibition hall for temporary exhibitions, a concert hall, a ceremonial hall for marriage registration ceremonies, a conference hall, a mini-hotel with interiors of the 18th-19th centuries, and the restored paper mill.

The castle offers a tour of the landscape park, including information about the Red Book, for the junior school students, a tour on the history of religions and the Middle Ages for the secondary school students, and a tour of the home icon museum for adults. In the next year, the exhibition for school students will be expanded to include a section on Mysterious Poisonous Herbs, featuring 50 types of herbs which were used in ancient times to poison and disable the enemy armies. One more section was added to the exhibition for adults, displaying old maps, utensils, weapons and household items. A chapel with a unique icon of the Holy Mother with Rainbow is already being built in the castle tower specifically for the newly-weds. (Fig.6)

Radomysl Castle actively collaborates with young artists, sculptors, craftsmen, collectors and philanthropists in organizing and holding various exhibitions of historic and cultural items and pieces of art. The recent open air painting sessions were attended by both young and well-known Ukrainian artists. University students specializing in cultural and religious studies prepare their theses in the halls of the castle.

The castle’s concert hall is designed for chamber music; its acoustics meet the highest European standards. These walls have already seen the concerts of the Ukrainian National Artist Nina Matvienko, the Vienna Opera House soloist Salina Alexandrova, the Merited Music Band of Polish Culture – I.F. Dobzynski Chamber Ensemble, and the chamber quartet of the National Opera of Ukraine. And behind the black grand piano in the corner of the concert hall, there is a natural spring where lives an amphibious frog Gertrude who sneaks into the hall through the rock, nobody knows how. This spring makes the concert hall of Radomysl Castle really unique. The spring water is believed to have been used to save people from thirst when they were hiding in the fortification during attacks of invaders. The medieval paper mill, restored in 2012, is the only place in Ukraine where you can make your own paper with a unique watermark. It really takes you back to the days when every sheet of paper was made by hand and served to promote the ideas of enlightenment and spirituality.

Today Radomysl Castle is also a centre of green tourism. Coniferous forests stretch out for tens of kilometers around the castle area, purify the air and saturate it with oxygen and essential oils. The water of the two waterfalls does not freeze even in winter. By falling on the rocks, it produces high concentration of negative ions in the air and makes a unique microclimate around the castle area, which improves your immune and cardiovascular systems. (Fig.7)

Going back to the roots and restoring the Radomysl Castle together with its paper mill opens a new chapter of tourism in the glorious history of the ancient city of Radomysl which is home to only 13,000 residents now. Today, anyone can visit this unique spiritual place, the focus of a centuries-old spiritual heritage of the Ukrainian nation and feel the touch of the Soul of Ukraine, the world’s only museum of Ukrainian home icon.

Natalia Churikova
Yuri Rudnytsky and
Oksana Lysak