Gorodok St. Nicholas's Convent

The house stands in the centre of the village of Horodok and occupies an oval raised islet with an old park on the river Ustia; arms of the river separate it from the village, and a bridge on the northern side joins the island to the world outside⁴.

Horodok is documented from the middle of the 15th century, and in the 1470s it passed to Prince Semen Nesvytskyi, who also owned the neighbouring Rivne; a castle stood on the island¹. Anastasia, daughter of his widow Maria and wife of Prince Semen Olshanskyi, gave Horodok to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and the first known notice of Horodok as a Lavra estate is dated 6 March 1516: on that day Prince Kostiantyn Ivanovych Ostrozkyi confirmed his mother-in-law's will^{1, 6}. On the island the Lavra founded its skete, where a single-storey monastic block was raised with a church of the holy prophet Elijah⁵. In the 1590s the hierarch Meletii Khrebtovych-Bohurynskyi, archimandrite of the Lavra from 1576, died here¹. In 1628 a church council was held in Horodok to hear the treatise of Meletii Smotrytskyi, archbishop of Polotsk, on the differences between the Orthodox and the Catholic faiths¹. Under the year 1650 the documents mention a church of the prophet Elijah in Horodok¹.

From 1715 Horodok belonged, by the will of the king of Poland, to secular magnates, and from 1730 to the Uniate metropolitan Atanasii Sheptytskyi; at that point the Orthodox monastery ceased to exist¹. In 1740 Sheptytskyi built a stone church of St Nicholas of Myra on the island, with a parish attached to it^{1, 5}. The stone block of cells adjoining the church from the south-west is also dated to the 18th century, and in 1772 a wooden bell tower was raised at some distance north of the church; the lower of its two tiers was later rebuilt in stone^{1, 2}.

In 1794 Horodok was granted to the Hungarian count Valentin Esterhazy, who used building material from the walls of the old castle to rebuild the block of cells into a manor palace in the classical style and laid out a park on the island^{1, 5}. In 1878 the estate was bought by the family of the engineer Baron Rudolf von Steinheil, and his son Fedir opened a hospital in Horodok in 1895, which he handed over to the local self-government, and a two-class public school in 1898¹. In 1896, through the efforts of the baron, the historian Mykola Biliashivskyi and other scholars, the first local-history museum in Volhynia appeared in Horodok and worked until the beginning of the First World War^{1, 5}; it occupied the middle of three blocks the patron built north-east of the church².

During the Second World War a military hospital was housed on the island, and from 1948 to 1990 the regional tuberculosis sanatorium¹. Until the early 1960s the church of St Nicholas still served as a parish church, then became a store for the exhibits of the regional museum, and in 1989 opened again as a parish church¹.

In 1991 the sanatorium was closed, and in the same year the civil authorities handed the complex of buildings on the island to the Rivne eparchy; from 1 September 1991 the first courses for choir directors in the Rivne region began at the church of St Nicholas¹. In 1992 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the revival of the monastery at Horodok¹. A house church of the prophet Elijah was arranged in the old block of cells, and its consecration took place on the feast of the Praise of the Mother of God, which in 1993 fell on 3 April; that day is held to be the date of the actual revival of the house¹. In the same year of 1993 the first monastic tonsure was performed here¹¹, and on 22 June the women's courses for choir directors received the status of a Spiritual School¹. The house was settled with thirteen nuns⁵. Since 1995 a music studio for children has worked at the monastery - the Law of God, singing at the services, drawing and needlework - and a women's almshouse has been set up¹.

The architectural ensemble of the island can be read from the bridge. At the southern end of the bridge stands the building of the holy gates (2004-2008); on the northern slope are the chapel of the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ (2000) and the two-tier bell tower of 1772; further along the street stretch three blocks of the late 19th century, and the street rounds the church of St Nicholas of 1740 and the palace of the 18th-19th centuries adjoining it, with the house church of the prophet Elijah. West of the palace is a block of cells with a bell tower and two churches, of the Praise of the Mother of God and of the holy martyrs Faith, Hope, Love and their mother Sophia (1998-2004); south-west of it is the church of the Nativity of Christ (1998-2003), and beside it the cave church of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem (2003-2011)².

The house teaches and sings. The Horodok spiritual school for choir directors and psalm-readers saw its thirtieth class graduate in June 2025⁹, and in July 2024 the first class of the Centre of Distance Education for the laity graduated here: a two-year course in theological and pedagogical subjects taught by video link by lecturers of the Kyiv Theological Academy, completed by twenty-four students¹⁰. In May 2026 the choir of the sisters took first place in the chamber-choir category at the 45th International Festival of Sacred Music in Poland, sharing it with a Polish vocal quartet, and gave concerts in three towns⁸.

In July 2026 the sisters recreated the Dubno icon of the Mother of God - the family image of the princes Ostrozkyi, given by them to the Transfiguration monastery in Dubno and lost without trace during the First World War; the face was painted by an iconographer from among the sisters, and the riza, adorned with pearls, beads and precious stones, was embroidered by hand over more than three months by one of the nuns⁷. On 2 August 2026, the day of the prophet Elijah, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the monastery for the 510th anniversary of the first mention of monastic life on the island, consecrated the restored Dubno icon and read a prayer before it; the celebration ended with a procession around the house⁶.

The chief holy object of the monastery is the gracious image of the Mother of God "the Merciful" (of Kozelshchyna), given as a gift by the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in 2000, and the possessions of the house include the skete of the righteous Anna at Onyshkivtsi and the metochions of St George at Rivne and of the Ascension at Mlyniv⁵. The feasts here repeat the dedications of the churches: the Nativity of Christ on 25 December (7 January), the Praise of the Mother of God on the Saturday of the fifth week of Great Lent, the local celebration of the icon "the Merciful" and the memory of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem on 29 December (11 January), the memory of the prophet Elijah on 20 July (2 August), of the martyrs Faith, Hope, Love and their mother Sophia on 17 (30) September, of St Nicholas on 9 (22) May and 6 (19) December, and of St Peter Mohyla on 21 December (3 January)³.