Kostelna Street leads from Maidan Nezalezhnosti up to Tryohsvyatitelskaya Street — short, but surprisingly rich. It arose in the 1830s and got its name from the Catholic Cathedral of St. Alexander, built in the style of late classicism in 1817–1849. Today, the cathedral remains the main architectural dominant of the street — together with the monastery buildings, the fence and the Art Nouveau apartment building, it forms a complete ensemble. Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko immortalized the church in one of his watercolors.
Built up mainly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the street has almost completely preserved the architecture of that era: apartment buildings in the Art Nouveau, Neo-Renaissance, Eclectic and Constructivist styles. In house number 9, while studying at the Polytechnic Institute, the future designer of rocket technology Sergey Korolev lived. And building No. 15, built by architect Zabolotny specifically for scientists, became a real Kyiv academic residence: mathematician Mykola Bogolyubov, computer pioneer Serhiy Lebedev, mathematician Mykhailo Lavrentiev, and dozens of other prominent scientists lived here at different times.