Attractions of Ivano-Frankivsk region

The ethnographic and entertainment complex "Polonyna Pertsi" in Yablunytsia near Bukovel is a kind of museum of the Carpathian flavor. This Hutsul amusement park is located in the Carpathian polonyna (mountain meadow) at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level with a view of Mount Hoverla.

The restored Hutsul hut has a collection of antiquities and traditional Hutsul clothing that can be tried on for a photo shoot. Workshops on folk crafts are held at various locations: blacksmithing, pottery, carving, coverlet-making, easter egg painting, cooking of Hutsul dishes, etc.

The complex has its own farm with a flock of sheep and a dairy-house where polonyna cheese is made. The owner of "Molfar's Hut" tells about the traditions of ancient Hutsul magic. There are tastings of authentic Hutsul cuisine cooked on firewood according to old recipes and branded liqueurs.

You can buy Carpathian mushrooms, cheeses, teas, liqueurs in a local shop.

The healing spring on the slope of Krylos Hill near the Assumption Cathedral is called the Princely Well in Krylos.

Since ancient times, it served as a source of drinking water for the inhabitants of ancient Halych. According to legend, the spring arose from the blow of the prince's sword during a long siege, providing drink to the desperate defenders of the city.

For the 1100th anniversary of ancient Halych, a four-meter rotunda with a copper dome and a gilded cross was installed above the spring. There is also an observation deck.

The "Probiy" waterfall on the Prut River is one of the most full-water, picturesque and popular waterfalls of the Carpathians.

It is located in the center of the resort town of Yaremche, which is why there are always many tourists here. The waters of the Prut roll over stones at a low height (8 meters), but in the spring the stream is very full.

A pedestrian bridge is thrown over the waterfall.

Tourists are offered to take pictures against the background of rocks in Hutsul costumes.

Nearby is the most popular and quite expensive souvenir market in the Carpathians.

The Arts of Prykarpattya Museum in Ivano-Frankivsk is the largest treasury of sacred, fine and decorative art of Ivano-Frankivsk region, whose collection includes more than 15 thousand works of art.

The institution opened in 1980 as the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Art Museum. It has since been housed in a Roman Catholic church.

The Collegiate (Parish) Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saints Andrew and Stanislav is an architectural monument of national importance, one of the most valuable and ancient architectural and spiritual monuments of Ivano-Frankivsk. Built in 1672-1703 by French architects Fransua Korassini and Karol Benua to order the city's founders Andriy Potocki as the ancestral tomb of this magnate dynasty (Potocki's coat of arms "Pylyava" is located on the second floor on the east wall in front of the buttresses).

The three-nave basilica with a transept is made in the Baroque style with elements of the Renaissance. The interiors of the church have preserved frescoes by Erazm Fabyanskyi, which in Soviet times determined his fate to become an art museum.

Now the exhibition presents samples of Halician iconography and Baroque sculpture, the works of classics of Western Ukrainian painting: Kornyl Ustyanovych, Ivan Trush, Yaroslav Pstrak, Yulian Pankevych, Oleksa Novakivsky, Osyp Sorokhtey, Olena Kulchytska, as well as the works of Polish, Austrian, German and Italian masters of the 18th century.

The most valuable part of the collection are considered to be six sculptures by the outstanding Ukrainian sculptor Ivan Heorhiy Pinzel.

The rock of Pysanyi Kamin (Written Stone) is a famous monument of nature, history and culture. Huge blocks of sandstone, up to 20 meters high, form a flat platform that offers a stunning view of the surrounding mountains.

The Pysanyi Kamin is an ancient pagan sanctuary where a sacred fire burned in ancient times. Many drawings (petroglyphs) and inscriptions remained on the surface of the rock over the millennia, which is where the name of the natural monument comes from.

Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, and Mykhaylo Kotsyubynskyi often visited here.

The Church of the Reformers is located in the very center of the village of Tsvitova.

The temple in neo-gothic style was built in 1938 according to the project of the architect Vavzynets Daichak. The structure of the church is decorated with a large number of arches, ledges, large and small spires. The church is decorated with wooden arched doors in the spirit of the Middle Ages, narrow rectangular window openings typical of defensive structures.

The bell tower stands on a platform with numerous arched openings and culminates in a tower with a central wooden Gothic spire in the form of a pointed cone and smaller cones around it.

The metropolitan residence "Cedar Chambers" (Kedrovi Palaty), also known as "Dacha Andrey Sheptytskyi", is a recreational complex in the Pidlyute tract on the Limnytsya River, which is considered the cleanest in Europe.

In 1892, the Lviv Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sylvester Sembratovych, bought 6 hectares of land on the slopes of Mount Lyuta, next to healing hydrogen sulfide springs, and built a summer metropolitan residence there.

The house got the name "Cedar Chambers" because it was built from cedars that still grow in this area.

Three pools were equipped under the symbolic names of Sylvester, Andriy and Titus. Aristocrats from all over Austria-Hungary, and later Poland, came to the Pidlyute tract for rest and treatment.

During the First World War, the residence burned down, but it was soon restored by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi. 5 houses were built, in which up to 400 people could live at the same time. Opposite the residence was a stone grotto on which a cross rose.

In Soviet times, the dacha was used by the party elite as a hunting lodge.

In 1999, the "Cedar Chambers" were returned to the Ivano-Frankivsk Diocese of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Currently, it is the diocesan retreat center "Urochyshche Pidlyute".

The building of the "Hutsulshchyna" restaurant near the Probiy waterfall in Yaremche is the most striking example of the folk architecture of the Carpathian region.

It was built in 1965 by the architect Ivan Bodnaruk from wood according to the canons of Hutsul architecture without a single nail.

The exterior design and interiors are distinguished by filigree wood carving. In the small hall there is a natural wood-burning stove lined with old Kosiv tiles. The walls are decorated with Hutsul hatchets-bartkas and other items of folk life. Tables are served with tableware made to order by Kosiv ceramic masters.

The restaurant "Hutsulshchyna" offers visitors traditional Hutsul cuisine, in the evenings a Hutsul band performs folk music.

There is a souvenir market nearby.

The Archcathedral and Metropolitan Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ is the main Greek-Catholic shrine of Ivano-Frankivsk.

The cathedral was founded in 1720 as a Jesuit church, but due to construction errors, the original building had to be completely dismantled and rebuilt in 1752. In the middle of the 19th century, the temple was handed over to the Greek Catholics and it became a cathedral.

In 1899-1890, Bishop Andrey Sheptytsky of Stanislavsky served as the rector of the cathedral before his appointment as Metropolitan of the UGCC.

The Resurrection Cathedral is considered a model of the Austro-Bavarian architectural school with clear features of classicism. At the same time, the tops of the towers are made in the style of Hutsul wooden architecture.

In the interior there is a large five-tiered iconostasis, made by the famous Ukrainian artists Modest Sosenko, Yuliush Makarivskyi and Antin Monastyrskyi.

The building of the former Jesuit monastery with the collegium, which is now occupied by the medical institute, has been preserved nearby.

In 1993, a high-relief of Andrey Sheptytskyi was installed on the facade of the cathedral, and in 1997, sculptures of Princess Olha and Volodymyr the Great as patron saint of Rus, as well as the blessed martyr Hrihoriy Khomnshin, bishop of Stanislaviv (1904-1945), were placed in the niches.

The Greek-Catholic Cathedral of Saint Archangel Michael was built in Kolomyia in 1855 on the site of an ancient Dominican monastery and a holy spring.

A bell tower was built in 1871. Since that time, the appearance of the "Ruska Church" (Rus, Ruthenian, that is, Ukrainian) has practically not changed.

The authors of the original iconostasis and images were the famous Ukrainian artist Kornylo Ustiyanovych and the Hungarian artist Miklosh. Interior paintings were done by local artist Valerian Krytsinsky.

Several ecclesiastical brotherhoods were active at the temple of Archangel Michael.

During the Soviet rule, Saint Michael's Church was handed over to the Orthodox community of Kolomyia, but in 1990 it was returned to the Greek Catholics. The restoration was completed in 1996.

Across the road from the back side of the cathedral, a life-giving spring flows, which has preserved the ancient name "Klyashtor" (monastery). Its water is considered healing. Every year on Epiphany, the spring is consecrated.

The wooden church of Saint Basil the Great in the village of Cherche is one of the oldest churches of the Boykiv type.

Local residents call it the church of Saint Paraskeva Pyatnytsia.

The temple was built in the 16th century and moved to its current location (an old cemetery on the outskirts of the village) in 1733. The early type three-log church. The roof of the log cabins is tented, with three folds above the central and one above the side domes.

Basil's Church in Cherche is characterized by exquisite proportions. In 1970, restoration was carried out - the authentic central dome was returned to the temple.

The monumental building of the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Nicholas and Anna was built in the very center of Rohatyn in the 15th century on the site of a wooden temple.

It combines Gothic and Renaissance features in its architectural form. The loopholes on the 42-meter-high belfry testify to the defensive nature of the structure - it repeatedly played the role of a fortress tower during the attacks of the Turks and Tatars in the 17th century. A women's monastery and a hospital functioned at the church.

The building was damaged during the Second World War, in the 1970s it was converted into a furniture warehouse, then a local history museum. During the years of independence, the church was returned to the Catholic community, restored and consecrated as the Church of Saint Nicholas and Anna.

A monument to the legendary Roksolana has been erected on the Rynok Square in front of the church.

The defense church of Saint Nicholas in Chesnyky (according to other sources - Ascension Church) is a unique stone cult building, built according to the traditions of Ukrainian wooden architecture.

Saint Nicholas Church was built in the 14th century (some researchers assume that in the 12th-13th centuries). It also served as a fortress in which local residents defended themselves from the Tatars.

The church is three-part, with a rectangular nave, framed on two sides by a square nave and a faceted pentagonal apse. Each of the three volumes of the temple is covered by a hemispherical dome hidden under a wooden roof - shingles. In the 19th century, the northern and southern facades were strengthened with powerful buttresses.

The Church of Saint Nicholas in Chesnyky is an architectural monument of national importance. Its analogue is found only in the village of Rosokhy, Lviv region.

The Church of Saint Panteleimon is the only surviving building of Ancient Halych from the princely era.

The construction of the temple on the northeastern outskirts of the city was completed in 1194. It was founded by Galicia-Volyn bishop Roman Mstyslavych, naming it in honor of his grandfather, Prince Izyaslav of Kyiv, whose Christian name was Panteleimon.

In the 14th century, the church was transformed into the church of Saint Stanislaus, and in the 16th century, reconstruction was carried out and a Franciscan monastery with a bell tower, defensive ramparts and monastic premises was opened.

After the First World War, the Panteleimon Church was abandoned for a long time, restored in 1998, consecrated by Greek Catholics.

Ancient graffiti have been preserved on the walls, in particular the famous blossoming cross, which became the emblem of the National Reserve "Ancient Halych" and the coat of arms of the modern city.

The Museum-Manor of the Shukhevych family was inaugurated in 2019 in the village of Tyshkivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk region, where Father Osyp Shukhevych, the great-grandfather of UPA Commander-in-Chief Roman Shukhevych, lived most of his life.

In the house, the living and working premises where members of the Shukhevych family lived and worked have been recreated. The exposition presents their personal belongings, photos, documents, as well as a family tree.

The Museum of the Shukhevych Family is a department of the National Museum of Folk Art of the Hutsul Region and the Pokuttya named after Yosafat Kobrynsky.