Attractions of Zviahel

The Literary and Memorial Museum of Lesya Ukrayinka in Zviahel was created in the small house where the future poetess was born in 1871.

In 1870, the simple one-story house of the burgher Okruzhko was rented by the Kosach family: the head of the assembly of justices of the peace Petro Kosach and his wife Olha, who is known under the literary pseudonym Olena Pchilka. Little Larysa (Lesya) spent the first two years of her life here, after which the family moved.

In the surviving interiors of Lesya Ukrayinka's parents' house, the furnishings of the children's room and her father's office have been restored, in other rooms there are relics of the Kosach family, including Lesya Ukrayinka's personal belongings.

A transitional gallery leads to the neighboring building (former farm), where a literary and memorial exposition is displayed.

There is a bust of Lesya Ukrayinka in the yard.

Since 2023, Lesya Ukrayinka Literary Memorial Museum has been a communal institution of the Zviahel community. It has a branch - the Museum of the Kosach-Drahomanov family.

The Hillfort of the historic Drevlyany city of Zviahel (Vzviahel, Vozviahel) is located 5 kilometers north of the current center of Zviahel, next to the road bridge over the Sluch River, 500 meters north of the highway.

Vozviahel was first mentioned in 1257 in the Ipatiyiv Chronicle in connection with the campaign of Prince Danylo Halytskyi on the Bolokhiv land controlled by the Tatars. The city was then completely destroyed, and a new settlement later arose on the site of the current center of the city of Zviahel.

The northern hillfort is an oval earthen fortification with ditches and ramparts on the steep bank of the Sluch River.

The palace of the Myezentsev family estate in Zviahel is located on the right bank of the Sluch River, opposite the ruins of the Zviahel fortress.

In 1865, the Myezentsevs became owners of Novy Zviahel, which was then a suburb of Zviahel. At the end of the 19th century, colonel Serhiy Myezentsev began the reconstruction of the manor, which previously belonged to the Lubomyrskyi princes, then to the Uvarovs. The construction was completed in 1903 by the colonel's son Boris Myezentsev. Perhaps the architect was Oleksandr Palshau.

The palace was built in the then fashionable historicism style, representing an eclectic mix of Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism forms. In the stylized form of the building with two towers, the image of the palace of the medieval castle is romantically interpreted. The layout of the main forms of the palace coincides with the outline of the north-eastern wall of the Zviahel castle.

A large arboretum was laid by the Uvarovs at the beginning of the 19th century.

In the 1920s, the Myezentsev palace housed an agricultural technical school. Then the manor passed into the hands of the military, the fortifications of the "Stalin Line" were placed on the territory of the park. Currently, it is the headquarters of the 30th separate mechanized brigade. Access to the territory is closed.

Fragments of the fortress walls and the reconstructed defense tower of the Zviahel fortress are located on the high bank of the Sluch River in the very center of the city.

The construction of the castle was started in the 16th century by Prince Kostyantyn Ostrozky on the eastern borders of his Volyn domains. In 1600, a church was built nearby (now the Palace of Culture named after Lesya Ukrayinka is in its place). The castle was destroyed in 1648 during the Liberation War of the Ukrainian people.

During Soviet times, the territory of the castle was turned into a recreation area, the reconstructed fragments of defensive structures have nothing to do with the original. The foundations of the preserved walls can be seen from the river side.

The house-museum of the Kosach-Drahomanov family was opened in Zviahel in 1999 in the reconstructed house of the Zavadsky family, in which Lesya Ukrayinka's literary family lived for 6 years.

The museum`s exhibition is based on the lifetime editions of Olena Pchilka (Lesya Ukrayinka's mother), Mykhaylo Drahomanov (Lesya Ukrayinka's uncle), and Lesya Ukrayinka herself.

A music school is also located in the premises.

The Zviahel Museum of the Kosach-Drahomanov Family is a department of the Lesya Ukrayinka Literary Memorial Museum.

The Zviahel Local Lore Museum was created on the basis of the Museum of Military Glory, which has been operating since 1975, in two halls of the Lesya Ukrainka City Palace of Culture. In 2018, the Zviahel Local Lore Museum received a new separate building.

The museum's collections include about three and a half thousand exhibits of the main collection and almost one thousand exhibits of the auxiliary collection.

A separate section is devoted to the history of ancient Zviahel in the 13th-18th centuries. The museum stores a rich collection of written documents and ancient books. The basis of the numismatic collection is Roman coins, money from the Cossack era, and royal coins.

The ethnographic department of the museum presents a collection of towels, embroidery, and household items of the Polissya region.

A separate section presents the construction of Novohrad-Volynskiy fortified area No. 7, which stretched for 120 kilometers and was built in the 1930s. In 2014, work began on the museumization of the armored cap and half-caponier. These are unique objects of the fortification heritage of the first half of the 20th century, on the basis of which it is planned to create a branch of the open-air museum.

The Museum of Flax operates at the local history museum - an exhibition of flax products of the 19th-20th centuries. Here you can learn everything about flax from seeds to looms, the development of flax growing, the manufacture of fabrics and the tools of our ancestors.