Mysteries of Sadgora

16.10.22

 12.00 - 14.00

за 1 гривню!
person

A brief overview of the excursion

Sadgora is a small town on the left bank of the Prut River. In 1965 it became a part of Chernivtsi. Sadgora was founded in 1770 during the Russian-Turkish War. A bit later the adventurous Baron Mykola Hartenberg created there a mint on the outskirts of Chernivtsi. Since Gartenberg means in Ukrainian "Garden" ("sad" / "сад") and "Mountain" ("gora" / "гора"), so artisanal settlements were called "Sadgora". The coins that were minted in that mint had the emblems of Moldova and Voloshchyna. That is the reason why the Sadagurian coin is called the "great-grandmother of Euro".

Coin mint is the first manufactory in Chernivtsi. It appeared in the city thanks to Russian Empress Catherine. During the Russian-Turkish war (1768-1774), to provide her large army near Khotyn with everything necessary, the Empress agreed on the production of money with Baron Mykola Sadagursky (Peter-Nicolaus von Hartenberg) in Chernivtsi. Mint workers were minting coins from melted cannons from under Khotyn, where the main fighting took place. The coats of arms of Russia were not depicted on the coins, but the coin combined different monetary systems.

Church of St. Archangel Michael is one of the oldest Roman Catholic temples in Bukovina. The church was founded after the Russian-Turkish War in 1778, as a significant part of Sadgora's inhabitants professed Catholicism. Among them were Poles and Germans. Catholics made up 10% of Sadgora's total population. Jews were also involved in the construction of the temple. In the 1960s, during the Soviet Union, the church was closed. It housed a warehouse of food products. The temple was returned to the Roman Catholic community in the early 1990s.

The Synagogue or Friedman Palace is a building that attracts tourists and pilgrims from all over the world because the center of Hasidic Judaism is here. Tzadik Friedman, the spiritual father of the Sadogur Hasidism, was the owner of the great residence and the synagogue with magnificent Moorish architectural elements. He possessed the gift of healing the hopelessly ill people and didn't lose it after death as pilgrims say. Jews who settled in Sadgora at the end of the 18th century played a major role in the economic and cultural development of the town. They not only created Sadgora's "architectural face" but also started to organize many interesting fairs there. At that time, Jews made up 70-80% of the town's population. Most of them were artisans and traders. Emperor Franz II granted Sadgora with the official status of "trading town", and in the XIX century, it became an important commercial and industrial center of the Austrian Bukovina.