Attractions of Poltava district

Abazivka Village Museum of Local Lore has been located in the waiting room of Abazivka Railway Station since 2012. The exposition is decorated in the form of wide-format banners.

Its sections are devoted to prominent natives of the village, the Soviet period of the regional seed station, as well as the fate of the Abazivka people who took part in the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

The walls of the station are also decorated with paintings donated by Poltava artist of the sixties Oleksandr Hlushachenko.

The State Museum-Reserve of the outstanding pedagogue and writer Anton Makarenko is located in the village of Kovalivka, Poltava district, on the territory of the former estate of the Trepke family.

It was here from January 1921 to May 1926 that the colony for juvenile offenders and the homeless established by Makarenko was located.

The Makarenko Museum-Reserve was opened by UNESCO on February 25, 1988, on the eve of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the teacher's birth.

The Red and White houses, the outbuilding, and a number of small memorials have been preserved - the entrance arch, gazebo, well, cellar, stairs to the river, pier.

The main hall of the Red House houses the main exposition, which tells about the life of Anton Makarenko and his educational teams, the creative activity of the teacher, the fate of his pupils, the implementation of Makarenko's pedagogical ideas today.

In the White House - a memorial part. Classrooms, a girls' bedroom, a club, workshops, and Anton Makarenko's study, where he wrote the first pages of the Pedagogical Poem, were restored here.

The ancient buildings of the Trepke estate have preserved the decorative stucco of the XIX century.

The Art gallery named after Mariya Bashkyrtseva is the art department of the Dykanka Historical and Local Lore Museum.

The gallery is located in the premises of the former Zemstvo school, built in 1904.

The fund collection of the gallery includes more than 1,000 works. These are mainly the works of amateur local artists, professionals of the second half of the 20th century, and contemporary artists whose creative path is connected with this region.

The greatest interest of visitors is the memorial room of the artist and writer Mariya Bashkyrtseva, where life-size copies of her canvases are presented.

Also on display is a collection of works of art related to the work of the writer Mykola Hohol. In particular, a smooth-embroidered portrait of Hohol by Reshetylivka masters is presented.

The Poltava Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics is dedicated to outstanding events in aerospace science and technology in Ukraine and the world.

The Museum of Aviation and Space Rocketry was founded in Poltava in 1987 on the initiative of the creator of rocket engines, Academician Valentyn Hlushko.

The exhibition is housed in the former building of the first Poltava fire brigade (1810). Personal belongings of cosmonauts, models of spaceships and real units of space vehicles are exhibited in 6 halls.

A significant place in the exposition is given to natives of Poltava region. In particular, the scientific heritage of Yuriy Kondratyuk from Poltava is highlighted.

The holdings of the Poltava Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics include about 4 thousand exhibits.

A private ethno-museum of beer and moonshine opened in 2018 on the territory of the hotel and restaurant complex "Almaz-Plus" in the village of Abazivka near Poltava.

The exhibition presents original equipment and tools used for brewing and moonshine at different times and in different countries.

The collection of more than 600 exhibits was collected over 7 years by the owner of the complex Vasyl Kozhan. In addition to vats, cauldrons, bottles, mugs, there are also scales, control equipment, players, telephones, old books on the technology of brewing beer and other beverages.

The museum conducts tours and drinks tastings. The complex also includes the Beer House brewery. 

The Bilsk Museum of Local Lore is located in the village house of culture.

The main exposition is dedicated to the Scythian period in the history of the region on the basis of archeological materials of the Bilsk Scythian Hillfort - the largest settlement of the Scythian epoch in Eastern Europe.

Also in the museum you can get information about the development of the region during the Cossacks. Under the current name the village was founded in the XV century. Prince of Bilskym. Later it grew and became the hundredth town, which was part of the rank of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

The museum has data on the number and composition of the rural population at different times, tells about the crafts that were engaged in by the inhabitants of Bilsk.

The exposition of the department of the Second World War is very rich.

The Bilyky Museum of Local Lore was founded in 1972 as a folk museum of history and applied arts of the town of Bilyky. In 2021, part of the exposition of the former literary and memorial museum of the Hungarian writer and Bolshevik Mate Zalka was included in its composition.

The museum is located in the former priest's house, built in 1905 in the center of the town of Bilyky. In 1921, the chieftain Nestor Makhno lived in this house for a short time. During the Soviet period, the house housed the village council.

The historical part of the exhibition presents archaeological materials found in the village and its surroundings, an ethnographic collection of applied art products, materials about the history of the village and its prominent residents. There are collections of paintings and sculptures by local artists, models of monuments erected in the village.

Museum employees conduct sightseeing tours of the ramparts of the Cossack fortresses of Bilyke and Sokilka, as well as the ruins of the Zhevakhov estate, where a sanatorium operated in Soviet times.

The Chovno-Fedorivka Historical Museum is located in the premises of the secondary school of the village of Chovno-Fedorivka. It was created in 2009 by the efforts of local teachers and schoolchildren.

The "Ancient History of the Village" department tells about life in Chovno-Fedorivka and the surrounding farms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It exhibits dishes, clothes, towels, household items, tools, and historical photographs.

The section "The Village in the 1920s - 1940s" presents a large number of memories of the villagers about the Holodomor of 1932-1933, shell casings from World War II, agricultural tools (one-horse plow, millstone, corn planter).

The following sections introduce the modern life of the village of Chovno-Fedorivka and the history of the village school.

The municipal institution of culture "Chutove Museum of Local Lore" covers the history of Chutove region from ancient times to the end of the XX century, as well as tells about the famous inhabitants of the region.

The museum was founded in 1968 and is located on the territory of the Chutove Vocational School № 55.

The museum has 5,700 exhibits. After the reconstruction, the ethnographic exposition "Ukrainian Room" again conducts lectures on ethnography, in particular on Ukrainian folk customs and rites.

Ecopark "Kovalivka" near Poltava is one of the largest contact zoos in Ukraine. On an area of 120 hectares, more than 5,000 animals of 530 species are kept here, which can be observed, and some can also be fed and petted.

Many species of predators are represented in the ecopark, including tigers, lynxes, panthers, red wolves, servals, caracals, ocelots and others. Lemurs, monkeys, a family of tapirs, tree porcupines, iguanas, and turtles live in the enclosures. Among the ungulates in the contact part of the zoo, llamas and alpacas receive the most attention from visitors. You can also feed raccoons with special feed purchased on the territory of the park.

The pride of the ecopark "Kovalivka" is the residence of birds, the area of which is about 900 square meters. Here you can see flamingos, cockatoos, cranes and many other birds.

A steam locomotive runs through the territory of the ecopark. There are cozy gazebos where you can have lunch.

The Exaltation of the Cross Monastery in Poltava was founded in 1650 on the banks of the Vorskla River at the expense of Colonel Martyn Pushkar, a Poltava elder and burghers.

The Cathedral of the Ascension of the Cross (1699-1709) is the only seven-headed baroque church in Ukraine that has survived to this day. The four-story belfry (1786) in the late Baroque style is 43 meters high. The complex also includes the single-domed Trinity Church (1750) and the Simeon Church (1887).

During the war with the Swedes, there was a pond of Karl XII.

In the first half of the 20th century, the monastery was closed and ransacked, the premises were used by the NKVD as a prison for minors, then as a boarding school.

The complex of the Exaltation of the Cross Monastery was returned to the church in 1991.

The monument to the Swedish soldiers who died during the Battle of Poltava was opened in 1909 at the initiative of the Russian public in recognition of the bravery and courage of the soldiers of the army of Charles XII.

A memorial cross on a granite pyramid was installed at the place where the right flank of the Swedish army was located in the second stage of the battle. The height of the monument is about 9 meters. The inscription on the bronze plaque reads: "Eternal memory of the brave Swedish soldiers who died in the battle near Poltava on June 27, 1709."

According to various estimates, the losses of the Swedish army in the Battle of Poltava ranged from 6,000 to 7,000 people. Most of the dead were hastily buried in trenches and ravines.

The monument to the Swedes from the Russians is located right next to the highway at the entrance to Poltava from the Okhtyrka side.

The "Monument to Colonel Kelin and the Valiant Defenders of Poltava" was erected in 1909 on the site of the Masurian Gate of the Poltava Fortress in memory of the city's defense on the eve of the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

For 3 months, the fortress withstood the siege of the Swedish army of Charles XII before the approach of the main forces of the Russian Peter I. The defense was led by the commandant of the Poltava fortress, Colonel Oleksiy Kelin, who received the rank of major general for this.

The monument to the defenders of Poltava by the sculptor-animalist Artemiy Ober was erected for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava. The monument is a granite obelisk on a pedestal on which a bronze figure of a lion is located. Previously, the obelisk was crowned with an imperial double-headed eagle.

The People's Museum of History of the Poltava Polytechnic named after Yuriy Kondratyuk is dedicated to the creation and development of one of the oldest universities in the Poltava region, which was founded in 1930.

The university is located in the former building of the Poltava Institute of Noble Girls.

The exposition of the museum has 10 sections, where more than a thousand exhibits are presented, which acquaint visitors with the stages of development and traditions of the Poltava Polytechnic staff. In particular, you can see a clock from the house of the famous Poltava inventor Yuriy Kondratyuk, whose name is the university.

A separate exposition is occupied by models of the university building, stands with scientific achievements, awards of the former Poltava Civil Engineering Institute, which for a long time was transformed from a single-profile institution of higher education into a classical European university.

The Church of the Ascension of the Lord on the territory of the current residential area of Polovka in Poltava (the former village of Pushkarivka) was built in 1762 at the expense of Poltava colonel Ivan Chernyak as the cathedral church of the Pushkarivsky Ascension Monastery, founded here in 1721.

According to some sources, Motrya Kochubey, the daughter of General Judge Vasyl Kochubey, executed by Hetman Ivan Mazepa, spent the last years of her life here in a monastery (until the 30s of the 20th century, there was a grave of Motrya in the monastery cemetery).

At the beginning of the 19th century, the monastery was closed, and the Ascension Church acquired the status of a parish. All the monastery buildings fell into disrepair and were dismantled. Currently, the Church of the Ascension is an active church of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.