Attractions of Verkhovyna district

Kryvopillya pass is one of the highest passable passes of the Carpathians (1013 meters above sea level).

The P-62 Verkhovyna-Vorokhta highway passes through the Kryvopillia Pass.

From here you can enjoy a picturesque view of Verkhovyna, the Chornohora massif and Mount Hoverla.

The Museum of Local Lore was established in the village Kryvorivnia in 1965 on the basis of a secondary school.

The exposition tells about the history of the Hutsul village, life and way of life of the region's inhabitants.

The museum has more than 100 exhibits.

Mount Pip Ivan is one of the highest peaks of the Chornohora Carpathian massif, the third highest in Ukraine (2022 meters).

It used to be called Black Mountain (Chorna Hora), which is where the name of the entire Chornohora range comes from. According to legend, Oleksa Dovbush was killed here by the "black calamity", i.e. hell, and the mountain turned black. In ancient times, there was a pagan temple on the mountain, and the folk tradition of a mass ascent on the night of Ivan Kupala has been preserved. The current name comes from the rock on the top, which resembled a priest in a cassock (now it has lost its characteristic shape).

Mount Pip Ivan is formed by sandstones, has a pyramidal shape, in the upper part - stone placers. It is covered with subalpine vegetation - widespread shrubs (Siberian juniper, rhododendron) and spruce forests. It is located within the Carpathian State National Park.

At the top are the picturesque ruins of the Polish astronomical and meteorological observatory "White Elephant" in the style of constructivism, which operated in 1938-1941. The three-story building had 43 rooms and a conference hall. The tower with a copper dome with a diameter of 10 meters housed a Scottish astrograph. Currently, the building is in a dilapidated state.

The most convenient route to the top begins in the village of Dzembronia.

The private museum "Galeria of Hutsul Traditions and Rites" was created in Verkhovyna by local historian Pavla Rashkovska.

A special feature of the museum is the interactive form of familiarizing visitors with Hutsul traditions and rituals. The hostess of the museum conducts tours in the form of a conversation with visitors at a table with Carpathian tea and pastries.

The exposition presents a large number of Hutsul embroidery and other elements of folk clothing, which visitors can try on. The excursion is complemented by master classes on tying a scarf and playing the drum.

Upon request, you can organize a dinner with traditional Hutsul dishes and tinctures on Carpathian herbs in the "Galeria".

The hostess of the museum also conducts author's tours of Verkhovyna.

The "Grandfather's Pharmacy" museum in Kryvorivnia near Verhovyna is dedicated to the history of folk medicine in the Hutsul region. The exposition presents healing herbs, fruits, roots and tinctures from them, which were used to treat Ukrainian highlanders in ancient times.

The excursion begins with the herbal room (museum-pharmacy pantry), where visitors are told about the history of medicine in the Carpathians and about the healing properties of Carpathian herbs and the preventive properties of herbal teas.

In the second room, visitors can learn about the use of special tinctures with fly agaric mushrooms, snakes and bees in traditional medicine for the prevention and treatment of serious diseases.

"Grandfather's Pharmacy" also offers tastings of tinctures based on herbs, fruits, berries and Montenegrin roots, aromatic Carpathian teas, and berry syrups for children. The same products can be purchased in the museum shop.

Hutsul musician Mykola Illyuk, head of the Hutsul ensemble, opened the museum of Hutsul life and art "In Trembitarya" at his home in Verkhovyna.

Ilyuk's house is located on a mountain in the village of Shveykovo.

The exposition presents traditional Hutsul costumes, household items and over a hundred folk musical instruments. The host conducts tours, telling about the origin of the Hutsuls, their life and crafts, rites and traditions. He plays most of the presented musical instruments.

Offers visitors master classes in playing the famous Hutsul trembit, drumba, cymbals, and bagpipes.

The "Khata-Grazhda" museum was created in Kryvorivnia on the basis of one of the few examples of this typical Hutsul house-fortress, built in 1858.

Residential and commercial buildings with hollow outer walls surround a small courtyard, forming a closed space. Grazhdas served to protect against enemies, wild animals and bad weather.

At the end of the 19th century, the Kryvorivnia Grazhda belonged to the Kharuk family, who were often visited by the writer Ivan Franko and the ethnographer Volodymyr Hnatyuk.

In 1964, this Khata-Grazhda was used during the filming of the film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors". Since 1984, the house has been empty. In 1993, it was restored and opened as a museum.

Exhibitions of paintings and photographs are held.

Museum "Khata-Grazhda" is a branch of the Ivano-Frankivsk Museum of Local Lore.

The Ethnographic Museum "Vyshyvanka" in Iltsi near Verkhovyna is also known as the Manor Museum "U Halynky Verkhovyky".

The museum of traditional Hutsul clothes and embroidered products was created in her own house by the Verkhovyna poet and folklorist Halyna Yacentyuk, better known by the pseudonym Halynka Verkhovynka.

The exposition presents more than 500 authentic Hutsul household items, the age of which in some places exceeds a hundred years. Among the museum exhibits are looms, woven Hutsul beds, carpets, many embroidered towels and more than 40 embroidered women from all over the Hutsul region. Of particular value are a Hutsul bartka (hatchet) over 140 years old, a woman's handkerchief, which is about 120 years old, a 200-year-old cup and other antiquities.

The hostess greets the guests with her own poems and songs, personally conducts tours and workshops on tying a peremitka - an ancient Hutsul women's headdress.

In 1999, a private museum of Hutsul lifestyle, ethnography and musical instruments was opened in his house by Roman Kumlyk, a musician and collector from Verkhovyna.

He collected exhibits for the museum for 30 years. These are folk clothes made of linen and leather, and painted clay plates, and Hutsul hatchets-bartka, and money signs of different times, and many other ancient things and objects of folk life.

The collection of folk musical instruments is the most diverse: violins, trembits, cymbals, drumbas, kobzas. The special pride of the collection is the Hutsul bagpipe - Duda.

Previously, tours were conducted by the owner of the museum himself, accompanying the story about each instrument with the performance of folk melodies and songs. After the musician's death, his daughter Natalya receives guests.

A visit to the Roman Kumlyk Museum of Musical Instruments must be arranged in advance.

The house-museum of the famous historian and politician of the Ukrainian People's Republic Mykhaylo Hrushevsky was opened in Kryvorivnia at the place where he bought the estate from the local landowner Pshebylivskyi at the beginning of the 20th century.

The future president of Ukraine visited here on vacation several times.

The villa burned down in 1917, but in 2003 it was recreated based on the surviving drawings and memories of eyewitnesses.

The museum presents biographical documents and photographs, an ethnographic collection, and household items from the beginning of the 20th century.

Kryvorivnia Museum of Mykhaylo Hrushevsky is a branch of the Ivano-Frankivsk Museum of Local Lore.

The memorial museum of the Hutsul writer, folk philosopher, poet and artist Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit has been open in her house in Kryvorivnia since 2005 on public grounds.

The creative output of the mystic is about a thousand works, including 46 handwritten or printed books in a single copy, which the author illustrated and bound with her own hands, as well as several dozen small books.

The books "Heavenly Throne from the Foot of the Earth", "Prayers in Glory of the Holy Baptism of Ukraine-Rus" are devoted to spiritual reflections.

The creative heritage of Plytka-Horytsvit includes the fantasy-adventure novel "Indian Charms: Adventures of the Hutsuls in India". In addition, she wrote poems in the Hutsul dialect, painted pictures, was engaged in photography, and conducted ethnographic research.

Even during his lifetime, the house of Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit resembled a museum, it was visited by many Ukrainian scholars. Since 2022, the memorial part of the Kryvorivnia Museum of Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit has been housed in creative personality house. The authentic interior with cabinets filled with handwritten books has been preserved. Her paintings, photographs, documentary information about her life and work are presented.

Most of the exposition is located in the new museum premises in the center of Kryvorivnia.

Memorial Museum of the Hutsul writer, poetess, artist and folk philosopher Paraska Plytky-Horytsvit in Kryvorivnia was founded by the Verkhovyna Village Council in 2021.

It includes the memorial house-museum of Plytka-Horytsvit, created in the artist's apartment in the hamlet of Hrashparivka in 2005. The main exposition of the artist's works, opened in 2022, is located in the building of the former Kryvorivnia village council. The exhibition presents works of folk naive art of the writer and artist, who is called "Homer of Hutsul".

Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit's literary work combines under the title "Gift to the Native Land" 46 large handwritten and typewritten books of 500 pages each, as well as dozens of small books with her illustrations and homemade covers.

The People's Museum of the Hnat Khotkevych Hutsul Theater in Krasnoillia, Ivano-Frankivsk region, was founded in 1987 in a small wooden building in which the first Hutsul theater operated in 1908-1912.

The main exposition in the hall with a stage is devoted to the activities of the theater and its founder Hnat Hotkevych, other theater figures, including Oleksa Remez and Les Kurbas. You can see historical photos, manuscripts, play posters, theater costumes and props.

Materials on the history of the village of Krasnoillia, schooling in the Hutsul region, and participants in the Hutsul Uprising of 1920 are also presented.

The Petro Shekeryk-Donykiv Memorial Museum was opened in Verkhovyna in 2018 on the initiative of his descendants.

The exhibition is dedicated to the Hutsul public and political figure, ethnographer, writer, participant in the liberation struggle, Petro Shekeryk-Donykiv, who in the 1920s and 1930s was a voivode of Verkhovyna and an ambassador to the Polish Diet. He collaborated with Ivan Franko, Mykhaylo Kotsyubynsky, Hnat Khotkevych and Stanislav Vincenz. After the annexation of Prykarpattia by the Soviet Union, Shekeryk-Donykiv was repressed.

The museum is located in the house built in 1933, in which he lived for some time in Verkhovyna. The exposition presents old photographs, archival documents, letters of Petro Shekeryk-Donykiv and his personal belongings. In particular, you can see the school desk at which he studied as a child.

In 2021, the UPA Museum-Hideout opened in the basement of the Petro Shekeryk-Donykiv Memorial Museum in Verkhovyna.

The Tasting Hall "Cheese Shop in the Attic" ("Syrna Lavka Na Horyshchi") opened in 2020 in the center of Verkhovyna, next to the city market. The shop offers tastings of craft products from its own polonyna farm for groups of up to 45 people.

Local certified Hutsul cow bryndza is produced according to traditional technology from whole milk of cows that graze on mountain meadows at an altitude of more than 700 meters above sea level.

During an excursion to polonyna, you can get acquainted with the production process of polonyna cheeses and taste them surrounded by mountain landscapes. In the city tasting room, you can also taste the finished products of the polonyna cheese dairy: cow bryndza, sheep bryndzya, vurda, ordinary and smoked budz. In addition, you can order wine, Carpathian tea, guslenka and kulesha. In addition to cheeses, the store offers dried and pickled mushrooms, honey and honey products, and teas made from Carpathian herbs.

Tasting hall "Cheese Shop in the Attic" is a member of the Association of Carpathian Head Cheesemongers and participates in the Cultural and touristic route "Hutsul Cheese Plays".