Dniester rock cave defensive desert of Saint Onuphrius the Great near Potochyshche

Dniester rock cave defensive desert of St. Onuphrius the Great near Potochyshche
In the middle reaches of the Dniester – from Nyzhnev to Isakov, from Nezvysk to Gorodnytsia, researchers of the late 19th and 20th centuries discovered a territory rich in many ancient artifacts, a kind of archaeological reserve with hundreds of multilayered monuments – from Late Paleolithic sites, numerous Trypillian settlements, mound burial grounds to the princely period. These include the monuments of the villages of Potochyshche and Semakivtsi. Researchers V. Przybyslavsky, J. Kopernytsky, B. Vasylenko, B. Tomenchuk discovered more than two dozen monuments here – Trypillian settlements, mound and soil burial grounds and medieval settlements. One of them was discovered by B. Tomenchuk in 1987 to the right (up to 1 km) from the modern bridge over the Dniester (Potochyshche III).
The rock cave Hermitage of St. Onuphrius the Great is located four kilometers west of the village of Potochyshche, on the right bank of the Dniester, 300 m from the bridge in the Khrypovo tract. Here, in an outcrop of Silurian-Devonian rocks, which stretches for hundreds of meters along the Dniester and is covered from above by a Neogene gypsum-anhydrite horizon (Monchak L. S., Stelmakh O. R., Khomin V. R. Geological Guide to the Ivano-Frankivsk Region. Ivano-Frankivsk, 2010. P. 215), four hermit caves are carved out at a height of 3-6 m.
There are still no historical references to this unique monument. In the folk memory of the inhabitants of the village of Ustechka, across the Dniester, legends about hermit monks who in medieval times settled in caves and grottoes carved into rocks have been preserved. The cave monastery has been partially studied archaeologically. Despite the fact that the monument is located near the crossing over the Dniester, an ancient important communication hub, it was comprehensively examined only in October – December 2025 by researchers from the Center for History, Ethnology and Archaeology of the Carpathians, as well as the Department of Ethnology and Archaeology of the Vasyl Stefanyk Carpathian National University, consisting of M. Kugutyak, B. Tomenchuk, S. Boyan-Hladkoa, R. Kobylnyk, B. Khruslov and M. Moskaluk, with the participation of history students V. Hryhoryshak, M. Shkrobach, O. Lototsky, K. Pakhomov, and Y. Khodak.