Holy Cross Greek Catholic Cathedral

The Jesuits finished their church on Castle Hill in 1646. That April, a few hundred metres uphill in the castle chapel, 63 Byzantine-rite priests signed the Union of Uzhhorod and brought the Greek Catholic Church of Transcarpathia into being. In 1775 an empress handed those priests' successors the Jesuits' church, and it has been their cathedral ever since.

The Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is the seat of the Mukachevo Greek Catholic Eparchy, which answers straight to Rome rather than to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Kyiv. Two matching towers and a Corinthian portico face the old town from the shoulder of the hill.

Built by Jesuits, signed over by an empress

Count János X Drugeth issued the charter on 31 July 1640, moving the Jesuit college from Humenné, over what is now the Slovak border, to Uzhhorod. A small church went up beside the school; what stands today is largely its replacement, rebuilt in full late Baroque between 1732 and 1740.

Then the ground moved under the order. Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits in 1773; in 1775 Maria Theresa signed college and church over to the Mukachevo Greek Catholic Eparchy. Its bishop, Andriy Bachynskyi, had already prised the eparchy free of the Latin bishops of Eger and moved its seat here. Franz Anton Hillebrandt reworked the building for the Eastern rite, and Bachynskyi consecrated it on 15 October 1780 — a Latin inscription over the portal still records the date.

Two towers, four columns and a Viennese clock

The two features everyone photographs are late additions. Between 1876 and 1878, under Bishop Ivan Pastelii, the architect László Fabri added the portico on four Corinthian columns and the split flight of reddish marble steps that funnels you to the door. The clock followed in 1878; its Viennese chiming movement still marks the hours.

The bell towers are octagonal, three-tiered and identical, and the hill lifts them clear of the roofline, so they work as a compass for the old town. The left tower holds a single bell, Ivan; the right carries three. Walk round into the courtyard behind, where a painted vertical sundial sits on the wall of the old residence — buried under Soviet paint for decades, uncovered in 2012. Hardly anyone who shoots the facade bothers.

The 1779 iconostasis and Bokshai's ceiling

Inside, the vaulted nave is faced in marble and stucco, lighter and more Rococo than the front suggests. The carved multi-tiered iconostasis was made in 1779 for Bachynskyi's refit, in the Theresian manner — Rococo detail on classicising bones — and it is what to give your time to.

The ceiling is modern by comparison. In 1939 Josyp Bokshai, the painter who did most to make Transcarpathia an art region in its own right, covered the plafond with a monumental Exaltation of the Holy Cross; three years later he added the coloured glass. Both were restored between 2020 and 2023. Come in daylight and let Bokshai's windows do the lighting.

The crypt and Bishop Romzha

A crypt runs under the church, where the eparchy buried its bishops, Bachynskyi among them. The cathedral also holds a fragment of the True Cross set into a crucifix, one of very few in Ukraine.

The tomb most people come for is Theodore Romzha's. Bishop of Mukachevo from 1944, he was riding in a carriage near Ivanivtsi in October 1947 when a lorry rammed it. He survived, and was taken to hospital in Uzhhorod, where he died on 1 November, poisoned with an injection of curare by a nurse the security services had placed at his bedside. He was 36. John Paul II beatified him in Lviv on 27 June 2001; his relics were brought to the cathedral on 28 June 2003, a date the eparchy still keeps.

1949, then 1991

On 16 February 1949 the Soviet authorities, having outlawed the Greek Catholic Church, took the cathedral and gave it to the Orthodox, who held it for four decades. The bishops' residence next door went to Uzhhorod State University the same month; the university's scientific library moved in, built its founding collection out of the confiscated episcopal books, and is there still.

The cathedral came back on 10 October 1991, the formal handover following on 7 January 1992 — Christmas Day. It is a working cathedral again, full on Sundays.

Visiting

The cathedral stands at pl. Andriia Bachynskoho 1 on the slope of Castle Hill, the old residence and its library round the corner at vul. Kapitulna 9. It is a short uphill walk from the centre, best done in one line with Uzhhorod Castle and the open-air museum beyond.

It is open outside services; the parish posts the liturgy schedule. Dress for a working church. From the foot of the steps you get a last look back over the centre before you carry on up to the castle.