The Annunciation Cathedral is the main Orthodox church of Kharkiv, Ukraine. The pentacupolar Neo-Byzantine structure with a distinctive 80-meter-tall bell tower was erected between 1889 and 1901, from designs by a local architect, Mikhail Lovtsov.
The candy-striped cathedral supplanted the older Assumption Cathedral as the main church of Kharkiv and was one of the largest and tallest churches of the Russian Empire. The icon screen used to be of Carrara marble.[1] The church was frescoed in a style derived from St Vladimir's Cathedral in Kiev.[1]
The cathedral was closed to worshippers in 1930 but reopened during the German occupation in 1943. It is the seat of the Kharkiv eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). The Ecumenical Patriarch Athanasius III Patelaros and several saintly bishops are buried there.[1]