This was my first real experience of an eastern orthodox cathedral and the interior of St Sophia’s cathedral certainly didn’t disappoint. I wasn’t quite expecting to see such a beautiful set of frescos. I found myself wandering from arch to arch staring up and marvelling at the next new impressive sight. I spent quite some time wandering around the interior, losing my travelling companion only to be reunited with broad grins across our faces; neither of us was really expecting a site of this quality. The rest of the precinct of St Sophia’s was reasonably nice but not especially interesting.

A day later we visited the Lavra Monastery a little further to the south of the centre. This is a much larger complex and is still an active site of pilgrimage. The upper part of the Monastery was fairly busy, the Bell Tower was closed for renovations so we headed into the Cathedral, and this has been mostly rebuilt and was only mildly interesting inside. The highlight of the Upper Part was the Refectory Church, which had a magnificent interior, really showing the Byzantine heritage of the architecture of the buildings.

We then proceeded down to the lower part of the monastery, taking in the wonderful views over the Dnieper flowing through the centre of Kiev. The Lower part of the complex is the focal point for pilgrims as this contains the caves for which the site is famous. All are welcome to enter some of the caves to view the mummified bodies of saints, though there are requests posted to ask that certain areas be reserved for Pilgrims and prayer only. There is no light in the Caves and the only way to navigate around is by buying a beeswax candle to light the way. This actually leads to quite a sensory load. There is the almost total darkness, the chill of the caves, the heat and smell from the melting beeswax, it makes visiting this WHS quite a unique experience.

Altogether I was very impressed with Kiev, it is a big, bustling city reminding me of places like Barcelona and Milan. There were lots of tree lined boulevards with cafe’s spilling out into them. The roads are busy and there are a multitude of grand buildings. It is not the sort of place that you could get a full grip on in a few days and I think repeat visits would be greatly rewarded. The WHS itself is truly brilliant the architecture and internal decoration were simply fantastic. A real favourite site from the list.