Attractions of Kyiv region

The famous Kyiv "House with Chimeras" is one of the most extravagant creations of the architect Vladyslav Horodetskyi (he lived in this building until 1920).

The house is located on a steep cave slope, has three floors on one side, and six on the other. The facades are decorated with intricate sculptures on the themes of ancient myths and hunting, which served primarily as an advertisement for a new building material - cement. The legend attributes the gloomy sculptural subjects to the grief of Horodetskyi for his daughter who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

In Soviet times, the "House with Chimeras" was a communal building, then a hospital of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Currently, it is a small residence for receptions of the President of Ukraine. Tours to the "House of Chimeras" are organized by the Kyiv History Museum. The President of Ukraine Office is located opposite.

The Pereyaslav Collegium was opened at the Ascension Monastery in Pereyaslav in 1738. Its main purpose was to train the Orthodox clergy to fight against the union and Catholicism on the Right Bank.

The school had six classes: two grammars, one each - rhetoric, poetics, philosophy and theology. The term of study was six years. Children of the clergy, Cossack officers, burghers, and peasants studied here.

From 1750 to 1751, the outstanding Ukrainian philosopher-humanist, poet and educator Hryhoriy Skovoroda taught poetry at the Pereyaslav Collegium. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth, a memorial museum was established in the reconstructed building. The atmosphere of the library, classroom, teacher's room is recreated. The atmosphere of the era is conveyed by antique furniture and interior items - cabinets, chairs, secretary, astronomical globe, ancient musical instruments. A copy of the Peresopnytsia Gospel, which was kept in the collegium until 1862, is presented.

In the art department you can see a portrait of Hryhoriy Skovoroda by an unknown artist of the XVIII century, a sculptural portrait of the philosopher Ivan Kavaleridze, rare folk paintings: "Cymbalist", "Near the house".

The Hryhoriy Skovoroda Memorial Museum is part of the National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve "Pereyaslav".

A monument to the great Ukrainian philosopher and educator Hryhoriy Skovoroda is erected on Kontraktova Square in Kyiv in front of the building of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where he studied from 1738 to 1750, sang in the choir, and later taught.

Hryhoriy Skovoroda is depicted as if returning to his alma mater. According to the idea of the author of the sculpture, Ivan Kavaleridze, he was supposed to be barefoot, with a Bible under his arm and a cross around his neck, but at the request of the party leadership, the philosopher was put in shoes, and the Christian symbols were removed.

The Skovroda monument became the mascot of the students of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. According to tradition, every year on the day of the academy on October 14, the monument is washed, and on June 28, on the day of the awarding of diplomas, a bonnet - a black graduate cap - is put on Skovoroda's head. It is also a traditional place for informal youth meetings.

The wooden Intercession Church was built in Motovylivka in the middle of the 19th century on the site of a collapsed stone church, but in smaller sizes.

In the 1930s, the temple was closed by the Soviet authorities, the premises were used as a granary. During the German occupation, religious services were resumed and no longer stopped.

Today, the Intercession Church belongs to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The Intercession Church in Fastiv is a masterpiece of Ukrainian wooden architecture in Central Ukraine.

It was built in 1740 on the site of the ancient temple, founded by the famous Fastiv colonel Semen Paliy. The three-log Intercession Church is distinguished by harmonious proportions and completeness of forms. An arcade gallery surrounds the temple along its perimeter.

In 1781, the temple bell tower was built. In Soviet times, a thorough restoration was carried out.

On June 23, 2022, the Intercession Church officially transferred to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The National Center of Folk Culture "Ivan Honchar Museum" was created in 1993 on the initiative of the People's Artist of Ukraine Ivan Honchar, co-founder of the Ukrainian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments, and one of the largest open-air museums in the world - the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine.

The museum is housed in an ancient building - an architectural monument of the 18th century. The exposition is based on the private collection of Ivan Honchar, who in Soviet times searched for and collected highly artistic works of Ukrainian folk art, as well as the works of professional painters who could not enter state museums for ideological reasons.

A large collection of icons of the 16th-18th centuries, fabrics, ceramics, and musical instruments is presented.

The Memorial Museum-Manor of Ivan Kozlovsky is located in the village of Maryanivka near Vasylkiv, where the outstanding Ukrainian tenor was born in 1900.

At the age of seven, Ivan went from here to Kyiv to study at a church school at the Saint Michael Monastery. He sang in Saint Sophia Cathedral.

His wonderful voice and the combination of folk motifs with classics in his work brought Kozlovsky world fame.

The singer visited his homeland many times. In a small house under a thatched roof, photographs, personal belongings, film materials, gramophone records with Kozlovsky's concerts are kept.

On the bank of the river, next to the house, there is a cozy park where mallows, apple trees, oaks, lindens, thuja and sycamores grow.

The memorial of Hetman Ivan Mazepa was created in the village of Mazepyntsi, where he was born in 1639.

It was here in 1994 that the first monument to Mazepa in Ukraine and Europe was opened (sculptor - Yevhen Horban.). The monument was built on the initiative and at the expense of Ukrainian philanthropist Mariyan Kots, who lives in the USA.

The memorial complex also included the wooden church of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker (2007) and the Park of Cossack Glory (2009). Tree saplings were planted on the territory of the future park, a small museum was opened, and a cross was erected in honor of the Ukrainian Cossacks.

The Roman Catholic Church of John the Baptist was built in Bila Tserkva in 1812-1813 by Count Ksaveriy Branytskyi on Castle Hill, where the nursery was located during the princely times.

According to one of the versions, an ancient church stood on this place, which gave the city its name. Branytskyi built the church in memory of his son Oleksandr, who died in childhood.

In the plan of the building lies the Latin cross, traditional for Catholic architecture, stretched on the east-west axis. The interior of the church is decorated with ornamental moldings with openwork rosettes complex in terms of plot and technique. The church is painted with monumental paintings by unknown masters. A white marble stele in memory of Kateryna Branitska-Sanhushko has been preserved on one of the walls.

In 1990, the organ of the Czech firm Rieger-Kloss was established. Today, the Church of John the Baptist is the Bila Tserkva city organ and chamber music hall with a 300-seat hall.

The memorial museum-manor of the famous people's artist Kateryna Bilokur was created in a village hut in Bohdanivka, where she lived almost her entire life - from 1909 to 1961.

Here she began to paint in her unique, unique style. The lack of a high school diploma did not allow her to receive an art education, but it was replaced by natural talent, perseverance and love of art. She independently mastered the technique of painting and compositional skills, finding herself in the genre of still life. Bilokur's paintings have been exhibited at many regional and national exhibitions.

The estate-museum of Kateryna Bilokur preserves the interiors, presents the artist's personal belongings, numerous photographs and documents, as well as some paintings.

A monument to Kateryna Bilokur has been erected in front of the house.

The National Museum of Arts named after Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko in Kyiv presents the world art of Europe, Asia and the Ancient World in Ukraine.

The exposition is based on the artistic collection of the Khanenko family - prominent Ukrainian entrepreneurs, collectors and philanthropists of the XIX-XX centuries. The museum is located in their family mansion, built in the late XIX century in the style of historicism using artistic features of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo.

The Khanenko Museum represents about 4,000 years of art development in different parts of the world, more than 1,000 works in a permanent exhibition. Western European art of the XIV-XVIII centuries is represented by the works of such masters as Francois Boucher, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacques-Louis David, Giovanni Bellini and others. Among them are two masterpieces of Spanish painting - "Still Life with a Chocolate Mill" by Juan Surbaran and "Portrait of Infanta Margarita" by Diego Velázquez. The Khanenkos themselves valued the painting "Venus Dedicates Bacchanalia in the Secret of Love", which was attributed to Titian, but modern researchers have concluded that it is only an imitation of the master of an unknown Venetian artist of the XVII century.

The Khanenko Museum also has a huge collection of art from the Middle and Far East: Japanese Nets, Chinese porcelain, Persian rugs and Tibetan bronze sculptures. A small collection of artifacts from South America and Africa is presented.

GENERAL INFORMATION ON ACCESSIBILITY: The premises of the Khanenko Museum are located in historical buildings, which makes it difficult to create proper conditions for accessibility. In 2022, the Museum Courtyard was opened as a fully accessible and inclusive space. For blind and partially sighted people, the Khanenko Museum offers a tactile experience of art - 3 tactile copies of ceramics, 2 plastic albums with 17 tactile copies of objects from the museum's collection, and 2 special tactile maps that help navigate the space.

Khreshchaty Park on the hill near the beginning of Volodymyrsky descent in Kyiv is also called Kupetsky (Merchant's) Garden. Initially, this area was part of the Tsarsky (City) Park, until the Kyiv merchants leased from the city a corner of the garden adjacent to the building of the Merchants' Assembly (now the National Philharmonic of Ukraine).

On the Dnipro slope of Khreshchaty Park, behind the Philharmonic, in 1982, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the creation of the USSR, a sculptural composition was installed, consisting of the Arch of Friendship of Peoples and two sculptural groups under it. In 2022, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the sculptural part of the monument was dismantled, and the arch was renamed the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People.

A picturesque panorama of the Dnipro opens from here. The Water Museum is located nearby in the water tower (1877). The building next to it, resembling a fairy-tale castle, is the new premises of the Kyiv Academic Puppet Theater (2005).

Khreshchaty Park is connected to the City Garden by a 60-meter Park Bridge (1912) - one of the most romantic places in Kyiv. Also known as the Bridge of Lovers (according to tradition, lovers leave inscriptions and ribbons here) or the Devil's Bridge (the unlucky often chose this place to settle scores with their lives).

Khreshchatyk is the main street of Kyiv, the most popular place for city walks from the 19th century to the present day. The name comes from Khreshchaty Yar, from which the street began in the area of the current Yevropeyska (European) Square. In turn, the name of the ravine is associated with the baptism of Rus or with the word "christened" - cross-shaped.

For a long time it was a wasteland, the first houses appeared in the 18th century. Due to its favorable location between the Upper Town, Podil and Pechersk, Khreshchatyk quickly became the central and most fashionable street of the city. Most of the old building was destroyed in 1941, after the World War II it was rebuilt in the "Stalinist" style.

The Khreshchatyk street starts from the Yevropeyska Square, which is dominated by the modern building of the Ukrainian House. The square tower above the House of Trade Unions became a business card of Kyiv thanks to the electronic clock light board installed in 1981 (now it is replaced by plasma panels). The oldest building on Khreshchatyk is the Kane Hotel (1874), which now houses the Central Deli. Expensive shops and restaurants can still be found in Passage (1914) and on Arkhitektor Horodetsky Street. The street ends at Bessarabian Square, where the oldest indoor Bessarabian Market in Kyiv (1910-1912) is located.

On weekends and holidays, Khreschatyk turns into a pedestrian zone. Concerts and other mass events take place here.

The Klovsky Palace was built in Kyiv in the Baroque style on Klov (present-day Lypky), in the possessions of the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery, to accommodate honored guests of the Lavra.

The authors of the project were the German architect Yohan Schedel and the Ukrainian architect Pero Neelov, the construction was supervised by the self-taught serf architect Stepan Kovnir. In 1863, the third floor was completed. The interior was painted by Ukrainian artists in 1757.

Klovsky Palace was never destined to serve its purpose - representatives of the royal court who visited Kyiv did not stay here. The palace briefly housed the Lavra printing house, later a military hospital. Later, various educational institutions were located in it, and in Soviet times - museums.

In recent years, the building of the Klovsky Palace was completely restored, and it housed the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The walls and ceiling were decorated with sculptures of ancient Roman and ancient Greek gods of justice and fairness. The furniture is made according to the author's drawings in the style of the middle of the 18th century.

Excursions are planned.

The Knyshovy memorial park complex in Boryspil was created in 2007 on the territory of the historical cemetery, where many famous people are buried: ethnographer-folklorist and author of the words of the national anthem of Ukraine Pavlo Chubynsky, Decembrist Vasyl Lukashevych, hero of the Soviet Union Mykhaylo Babkin.

During the Holodomor of 1932-1933, people who died of starvation were buried here. In 1934, the Knyshova Church and Chubynsky's grave were destroyed.

Currently, the territory of the park has been cleaned and arranged, and the creation of a memorial complex is underway. Saint Nicholas Church was rebuilt.