St. Catherine's Cathedral stands within the Kherson fortress in Ukraine. General Ivan Gannibal commissioned it after the Russo-Turkish War, as a memorial to the conquest of New Russia. It was built from 1781 to 1786. The architect is thought to be Ivan Starov, with construction supervised by Ivan Sitnikov. The style is Russian Neoclassicism. The domed sandstone building has a Tuscan portico and heavily rusticated walls.
In 1790 Potemkin asked Starov to remodel the dome after his palace in Saint Petersburg. Potemkin and Prince Charles Frederick Henry of Württemberg were buried in the cathedral.
After the Russian Revolution it became a museum of atheism, and most icons were lost. It was closed in 1962 and used for log storage, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reclaimed it in 1991. In 2022 Potemkin's remains were reportedly removed to Russia, and Russian shelling damaged the cathedral in 2023 and 2024.
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