ROMNY

'Romny' (; ) is a city in the northern Ukrainian Oblast of Sumy. It is located on the Romen River and is the administrative center of the Romny Raion. The villages of Lutschky (438 inhabitants), Kolisnykove (43 inhabitants) and Hrabyne belong to the Romny city administration.

Contents

History

Sights

Famous people from Romny

External links

History

Romny was first noticed in documents in 1096. In 1638, the city had a population of 6,000 inhabitants, which made it by far the largest settlement in the periphery. In 1781, the city was chartered by the Tsarina Catherine II. Between 1979 and 1989, the population had risen from 53,016 to 57,502 inhabitants.

Sights

Probably the most pleasing building in Romny is the cathedral of the Holy Spirit, founded in 1735 in place of a wooden church. The four-pillared cathedral is designed in the Ukrainian Baroque style and is surmounted by three pear-shaped domes, each placed on a lofty drum. Although the cathedral belongs to the 1740s, the building of the nearby belfry and winter church was not undertaken until 1780.
Another noteworthy building is the church of the Ascension, which also has three domes, but was constructed later, in 1795-1801, and adjoins a Baroque belfry built in 1753-63.

Famous people from Romny

★ Pinhas Rutenberg, prominent engineer, businessman, a Russian socialist and a Zionist leader.

★ Joachim Stutschewsky, Ukraine-born Austrian and Israeli cellist, composer, and musicologist

★ Abram Ioffe, a prominent Soviet/Russian physicist

External links

★ Unofficial city information site