Attractions of Khmelnytskyi region

The Art Gallery of the Art Department of the Kamyanets-Podilskyi State Historical Museum-Reserve is located in the former educational building of the Theological Seminary (XVIII century) on the Armenian Market Square.

Mykhaylo Dostoevskyi, Stepan Rudanskyi, Mykola Leontovych, Anatoliy Svydnytskyi, and others studied at the Kamyanets-Podilskyi Orthodox Seminary.

The museum exposition presents works of painting, graphics and sculpture of the XVII-XX centuries, as well as a collection of icons of various religious denominations.

In 2008, the room-museum of Hodovanets was opened. Thematic exhibitions are held.

The Art Nouveau building, which currently houses various administrative organizations and shops, was built in Starokostiantyniv in the middle of the 19th century.

The modern two-story volume of the building is composed of several separate buildings placed close to each other, forming a single building - a square with an inner courtyard.

In 1917-1919, the headquarters of various military formations fighting in the district, in particular the Bohun Brigade of the Shchors Division, were located here at various times.

The wooden Church of the Ascension of the Holy Cross with a bell tower is located in the suburb of Kamyanets-Podilskyi Karvasary on a narrow coastal strip on the Smotrych River, under the walls of the Old Castle.

The church was built in the 18th century on the site of a temple that existed in the 17th century. The foundation of the church is made of limestone. The church itself is three-log, single-headed with a porch and sacristy on the north side and a belfry attached to the west.

The Church of the Ascension of the Cross is a vivid work of the Podillya school of folk wooden architecture.

The Atlantida (Atlantis) karst cave is a geological monument of national importance within the Podillya Tovtry National Nature Park.

The cave was discovered in 1968 by pioneer speleologists from Kyiv. It is currently supervised by the Khmelnytskyi speleoclub.

The cave has three connected tiers, the total length is 2525 meters, the area is 4440 square meters. Bats live here and small, not yet completely looted heliatites - stone flowers "grow" here. On the ceiling of the hall - crystals.

The cave is not illuminated and not equipped for visiting, in some places you have to crawl through. Excursions are possible only accompanied by instructors by prior agreement. To visit, you must have a change of clothes, lanterns and other equipment.

Taking crystals out of the cave is prohibited.

The grandiose complex of the Bernardine monastery rises on a hill a little away from the center of Iziaslav.

The construction was started in 1596 after the Union of Berestey. The architect Yakub Madlena perfectly integrated the defensive monastery complex into the surrounding landscape. The main buildings were Saint Michael's Church (1602) and a huge cell building (1610), surrounded by 6-meter walls with an entrance tower and a gate.

The monastery was damaged during the War of Liberation in 1648, but was later restored and rebuilt under the direction of the architect Paolo Fontana.

During Soviet times, the monastery was converted into a maximum security prison. The building still performs this function, so it is not possible to inspect the territory.

The ruins of the bishop's castle stand on the steep Nadzbruchan mountain above the village of Chornokozyntsi.

From the middle of the 15th century, the fortified summer residence of the Roman Catholic bishops of Kamyanets-Podilskyi was located here. During the first century of the existence of the castle, which stands on the Wallachian road, the castle had to be renovated several times, as it was very often subjected to Tatar sieges - in 1502, 1503, 1507, 1511, 1513, 1516, and the last village was burned to the ground. The most extensive repair work was carried out after the expulsion of the Turks who ruled here from 1674 to 1699.

A two-story palace was attached to the regular castle with two round towers, and a palace-type estate was built on the southeastern slopes of the castle hill. The defensive walls had a thickness of 1.9 to 3.6 meters.

Only the ruins of the castle and the stone gate of the estate have survived to our days.

A cascade of five lakes in a pine forest northwest of Slavuta, near the village of Stryhany, was formed on the site of exhausted peat quarries.

The lakes are deep, with clear and transparent water - due to the sandy bottom and a large number of artesian springs, which raise the glacial water of the Precambrian period to the surface.

There are pike, carp, crucian carp, crucian carp, tench, perch, and rare blue crayfish. There are wild ducks and swans.

During the Soviet times, on the shore of one of the Blue lakes, the Khmelnytsk NPP, located nearby, began to build the buildings of a pioneer camp and a recreation center, which remained unfinished.

Green tourism is developing in the surrounding villages. On hot summer days, there are many vacationers here, mostly motorists.

The stylish mansion, which now houses the Antoninivsk Town Council, was built at the beginning of the 20th century according to the project of the Viennese architect Ferdinand Fellner, the author of the Odesa Opera.

This is one of the few surviving pre-revolutionary buildings in the Art Nouveau style with the use of half-timbered timbers, which were used to build the square in front of the front gate of the Sangushko-Potocki palace. The Potocki garage for 9 cars and a workshop were located here.

Today, the restored mansion is one of the most visible and attractive architectural monuments of the village.

The Casemate Tower is one of the least known fortifications in Kamyanets-Podilskyi, although it is located in the heart of the Old Town, in the courtyard behind the district council building (passage through the arch of the hospital from Hospitalna Street).

According to one version, built in 1667 as part of the city fortifications. According to another version, built in 1783-1791 as part of the guardhouse complex and in peacetime served as a toilet for detainees.

The building is round in plan, 9.5 m in diameter, with a rectangular vestibule on the north side. The walls of the upper tier, at a height of about 2 m, cut through six loophole windows.

Currently, the Casemate Tower houses an exhibition "History of fortifications of the XV-XIX centuries" with three models of fortifications, samples of cold steel and firearms, copies of ancient plans, engravings, lithographs, drawings, diagrams and more.

The annex presents a collection of Podillya smoking pipes of the XVIII century.

The Castle Bridge connecting the Old Town with the fortress looks like a solid stone wall, but in fact is a kind of sarcophagus containing an earlier structure.

According to one of the versions, the foundation of the current bridge is a construction of the Roman era. Originally, the Castle Bridge was arched. It is built above the Smotrych Canyon where the loop of the river forms a thin rocky isthmus that separates the Old Town from the mainland. It is said that this is the only bridge in the world built along, and not across, the river bed.

The Castle Bridge acquired its current appearance in the 17th century, when Kamyanets-Podilskyi was captured by the Turks. They rebuilt the bridge, using stone from the dismantled monastery of the Barefoot Carmelites. Since then, it is often called the Turkish Bridge.

On the side of the city, the powerful defensive structures of the City Gate (XVI-XVIII centuries) and the Armenian Bastion (XVI-XVII centuries) have been preserved. There is a cafe in the laboratory casemate.

The Cathedral Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul is the main religious building of the Old City.

The Peter and Paul Church was built by the Dominican monastic order, which appeared in Kamyanets-Podilskyi in the 14th century. The construction of the stone church in the years 1502-1517 is attributed to Bishop Yakub Buchachskyi. During the Turkish rule (1672-1699), the temple was used as the main mosque, and a 36-meter minaret was attached to it. After the return of the Poles, according to the peace treaty, the minaret was preserved, but a gilded statue of the Madonna was installed on top. Now the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Kamyanets-Podilskyi is the only Christian church in the world with a minaret.

It houses a wonderful sculptural tombstone of 21-year-old Laura Przezdetska by Viktor Brodzkyi (1874). During a horse ride, the girl fell off her horse, broke her spine and died. In two years, on the order of the disappointed parents, the sculptor created a marble masterpiece: the beauty with the shadow of a smile on her face looks asleep, but the grieving angel has already lowered the extinguished torch, and the unread book is open on page 21. The sculpture is often called the "Sleeping Queen".

The magnificent Triumphal Arch (1781) in honor of the arrival of the last Polish king, Stanislav Avhust, leads into the courtyard of the Peter and Paul Church.

Excursions are held during the time free from religious services.

The church of John the Baptist of the monastery of the Capuchin order is located in the current administrative center of the city of Starokostiantyniv, although when the monastery was founded in 1750, Prince Yanush Sangushko allocated land outside the city walls.

The Catholic Church of John the Baptist was built in the strict late baroque style by the famous Italian master Paolo Fontana. The construction of the entire complex lasted until 1778, but the church was finished much earlier.

In Soviet times it was closed, now it is valid.

The palace in Bozhykivtsi was built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Zdyslavom Kolonna-Chesnovsky, a Polish landowner with Italian roots.

From 1923 to the present, the Chesnovsky manor houses a secondary school. Other manor houses have been preserved. The wing houses a kindergarten, and the bakery houses a country club. The former distillery was converted into a starch factory in 1931.

In 1998, the museum of the journalist and writer Dmytro Prylyuk was opened, a memorial plaque was installed on the school building.

The sculptural composition "Concord Table" on the hill behind the Old Fortress symbolizes the cultural diversity of Kamyanets-Podilskyi.

The monument was erected in 2001, after the first international festival "Seven Cultures" (sculptor Anatoliy Ihnashchenko). The giant concrete millstone in the center of the composition symbolizes the city, the metal pipe with a crown-shaped break is a fortress, and the limestone blocks spread around the millstone represent the seven nations that together created Kamyanets: Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Lithuanians, Armenians, Turks and jews

The eighth stone lying aside is interpreted as a symbol of the fact that in the future any other nation or nationality may also affect the development of the city.

The Craftsmen Synagogue in Khmelnytskyi is the only surviving Jewish temple in the city.

A small synagogue was built in 1890 in the Jewish quarter of artisan bakers, opposite the current central food market.

In Soviet times, the building housed a gymnastics school. In the early 1990s, the Craftsmen Synagogue was returned to the Jewish community of Khmelnytskyi, and it is now in use.