Berezan

The Berezan Museum of Local Lore is located in an original building with elements of folk architecture in the center of the town of Berezan in the Kyiv region. It was founded in 1975 on the initiative of local historian Halyna Ryh.

Today, the exposition of the Berezan Museum of Local Lore has nine sections: nature, traditional life, Cossacks, history of the Second World War, numismatics, folk art, etc.

The exhibition "Shevchenko's Room" is dedicated to Taras Shevchenko's stay in the city, in particular, a facsimile edition of his work "The Plundered Grave" is presented , written in 1843 in Berezan.

In the hall of the 1930s, you can learn about the tragic events of collectivization and the Holodomor in the Berezan region.

A bust of Taras Shevchenko is installed in front of the museum building.

The ancient burial mound of the Cossack times, described by Taras Shevchenko in the poem "The Plundered Grave", was restored on the outskirts of the city of Berezan in 2007 on the initiative of the modern Cossacks of the Berezan hundred.

The poem "The Plundered Grave" was written by Shevchenko on October 9, 1843 in Berezan, when he was visiting the local landowner Platon Lukashevych. The poet saw a picture of the excavations of the burial mound by Russian soldiers in the fields near Berezan. This metaphorical image of uprooting the historical memory and national self-awareness of the Ukrainian people became the leading one in Shevchenko's most famous anti-imperial poem.

Local expert Halyna Ryh was able to establish the location of the excavated mound in the landing near the railway track based on the stories of old residents. In 1989, on the initiative of the local branch of the People's Movement, the first memorial sign with a memorial plaque was installed here, and later the local Cossacks restored the destroyed mound and installed a stone figure of the Cossack Mamai on it.

The mound "Plundered Grave" (Rozryta Mohyla, Diggered Grave) is located on the eastern outskirts of the city of Berezan, at the exit towards Yagotyn, in the area of the railway crossing, 500 meters to the right of the highway along the railway track.