Ivano-Frankivsk Memorial Square. Ancient cemetery on Nezalezhnosti Street (Sapiezhynska St.) (9, Andrii Melnyk St., main entrance)
Passerby! Stop for a moment, honor these remains, here they cry: a husband of a beloved wife,
children of a good mother. What was the most precious for them, now is in this ground, death took
away everything from them – but it did not take pain.
The cemetery is called an open-air museum. By the state of preserving the cemeteries, one can judge
the culture of the people, the humanity of the era and the democratic nature of power.
The first burials here date back to 1782. This ancient cemetery was older than the most famous and
the most interesting cemeteries: Lychakivske in Lviv (1786), Baikove in Kyiv (1834), and Powązki in
Warsaw (1790). The cemetery, on the then Sapiezhynska Street, did not yield to these famous
cemeteries in the beauty of the ancient diverse gravestones (there was even a special creative
workshop in the city, where artists created monuments, graves, tombstones, and there were no
similar or standard ones among them), which were real works of sculptural art. Over five thousand
burials have been made here. Ukrainians, Poles, Armenians, Germans; Catholics, Orthodox and
Protestants were buried in this cemetery. In addition to civilian graves, there were burials of fighters
for the Independence of Ukraine – Legion of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and soldiers of Ukrainian
Galician Army, Polish November and January Uprising insurgents against Russian tsarism in 1831 and
1863, and legionnaires.
The most famous and most visited grave in the cemetery was the grave of the insurgent of the
November Uprising Maurycy Gosławski, a poet and second lieutenant of the Polish army in 1831. His
grave was one of the places of the patriotic demonstrations of the Polish community and one of the
few graves that survived the destruction of 1980. The participants of the revolution of 1848-49 and
38 insurgents of the January Uprising were also buried here. There were also great monuments of
Ignacy Kamiński and Konstanty Lenkowski.
The cemetery was the resting place of Agathon Giller and Karol Świdziński. On the Giller’s
gravestone, a prisoner of three occupying regimes, a member of the national government during the
January Uprising, was such an inscription: ‘Passerby! Believe in Poland as strong as this deceased
believed!’ (His remains were transported to Powązki).
In the 70’s and 80’s of the last century, the oldest municipal cemetery was destroyed and
reconstructed into the Memorial Square.
Of the many thousands of burials, only a few tombstones, of activists of various nations have been
preserved, including L. Bachynskyi – vice president of The West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR),
D. Sichynskyi – outstanding Ukrainian composer, M. Gosławski – Polish insurgent and poet, Ye.
Zhelekhivskyi – Ukrainian linguist, K. Świdziński – Polish poet, M. Buchynskyi – notary and folklorist,
I. Yakhno – teacher and doctor of philosophy, Yu. Dzvonkovska – the name of the second love of Ivan
Franko.
In 2002, the Memorial Square was reconstructed, during the reconstruction a chapel was established
on its territory. The interior of the chapel is decorated with a stained glass window ‘The
Lamentation’, and the stained glass images of the apostles are placed on the dome. The Image of
Edessa (the Mandylion) looks down at the laity from the highest point of the dome (artist
M. Sarapin).
In 2014, the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, who died during the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv, were
buried in this cemetery. Here also rest the soldiers who died in the fight against Russian occupation
in the east of Ukraine.
The Memorial Square is located in the central part of the city and has three decorated entrances:
from the side of Nezalezhnosti, Andrii Melnyk and Stepan Bandera Streets. On the initiative of
regional ethnographers and with the support of the city community, who organised the cemetery
reconstruction process during the years 2002-2009, the Memorial Square was put down in the
register of architectural monuments of national significance.