The Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chernihiv is a prominent architectural monument of the Hetmanate (1696). It was the main cathedral of the Chernihiv Trinity Monastery. The church was founded in 1679 by Archbishop Lazar Baranovich under the project of architect John Baptist Sauer and under his direction. The temple was built at the expense of Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa.
The peculiarity of the architecture of the Trinity Cathedral is the usage of the three-dimensional composition in combination with the elements of the Ukrainian baroque and early classicism. The exterior of the cathedral has some common features of the iconic structures of the West, for example churches with obligatory square towers around the corners of the west facade.
The cathedral is three-nave, six-pillar, tri-apse with seven baths. The structure is covered with a system of box and cross vaults. The walls of the Trinity Temple comprise recesses that imitate windows decorated with baroque vertical and horizontal profile lines and semi columns. Niches are filled with paintings. Over the entrance in the second tier of the Trinity Cathedral there is a window in the form of an Orthodox cross which is a special feature of the Chernihiv Baroque temples of the late XVII – early XVIII centuries.
The cathedral is decorated with an iconostasis which was made after the Second World War by a local artist Pimen Portne and with a wall painting complex of the 17th – 20th centuries. The relics of St. Lawrence, the saints Theodosius (Uglitsky) and Filaret (Gumilevsky) are stored in the temple. Under the floor of the cathedral there is a crypt that served as the burial ground for church hierarchs and the nobility of that time.
The Trinity Cathedral bell tower was built in 1771–1775. It has five tiers with a height of 58 meters! Each tier is crowned with splendid cornices. On the second tier the church bells are situated. The cells in the southwestern corner of the former Trinity-Elias Monastery were erected in the 1770s. The house of the Archimandrite adjoins them.