Attractions of Kherson region

The monument to Prince Hrihory Potemkin-Tavriyskyi was erected at the behest of Empress Catherine II in Kherson - the city that Potemkin built and where he was buried in 1791.

However, the construction of the monument began only under Oleksandr I, Catherine's grandson. The sculpture by Ivan Martos was installed in Potemkin Square in 1836. During the Soviet rule, the monument was removed from the pedestal (a monument to Karl Marx was erected in its place), and then it disappeared.

Restored in 2003 to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the founding of the city.

In 2022, during the occupation of Kherson by Russian troops during the Russian-Ukrainian war, on the eve of the retreat from the city as a result of a successful counteroffensive operation by the Ukrainian army, the Russian occupiers dismantled the monument and took it out of the city.

The Museum of House Vintage Cognacs "Tavriya" operates in Nova Kakhovka at the agro-industrial company "Tavriya" - one of the largest wine-making enterprises of Ukraine with a history of more than a century.

TThe enterprise was established in 1929 on the basis of nationalized wine farms of Swiss colonists with a central estate in the village of Osnova. Now the enterprise produces up to 7 million liters of ordinary, vintage and collectible cognacs per year, starting from the ordinary "Borysfen" and "Kakhovsky" and ending with the elite brands "Askania", "Kherson", "Imperial".

The exposition of the Museum of House Vintage Cognacs "Tavriya" is devoted to the history of winemaking in the region. The company organizes group and individual wine tours.

The city of Nova Kakhovka was under Russian occupation on the very first day of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, February 24, 2022. At the beginning of November of the same year, the mayor of Nova Kakhovka, Volodymyr Kovalenko, reported that the Russians had robbed the Tavriya cognac factory - they took away all the equipment, including with automatic bottling lines, and spirits for a unique collectible cognac.

The museum of local lore in the village of Velyka Lepetykha is named after the public figure Olena Tsipko, on whose initiative the museum was founded in 1975.

The museum fund has about 18,700 exhibits, including archeological finds of Trypillya culture, artifacts from the Cimmerian royal mound, Polovtsian stone sculptures.

A model of a Cossack winter camp, a Cossack sword and a bandura are presented.

In the hall "Ukrainian House" are exhibited household items and tools of the peasants of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Diorama "Velyka Lepetykha" is a view of the village in the late XIX - early XX century. The interior of the bourgeois room of that period was recreated in the "Living Room" hall.

The exposition on the Holodomor presents documents testifying to the crimes of the Bolshevik government that led to the mass famine of 1932-1933.

The "Hall of the Modern Period" covers the events of World War II, post-war reconstruction, the war in Afghanistan, and the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin began to be built in 1905 at the men's monastery, which was founded in Henichesk by the old beggar Sozontiy, who was considered blessed.

The church was built in the Rus-Byzantine style.

During Soviet times, the temple was preserved, although it was used as a gymnasium and granary.

In 1989, the church was opened again, restoration was carried out.

The Albin Havdzynsky Nova Kakhovka Art Gallery was founded in 1967.

It bears the name of the People's Artist of Ukraine Albin Havdzynsky, a landscape painter, a master of genre painting and portraiture. In the 1950s, he created a cycle of 237 works about the construction of the Kakhovka HPP, which he gave to the city to create a gallery, for which he received the title of honorary citizen of Nova Kakhovka.

In addition to the works of Havdzynsky, the exposition of the Nova Kakhovka art gallery presents etchings by the People's Artist of Ukraine Vasyl Myronenko, illustrations by the People's Artist of Ukraine Valentyn Lytvynenko and others.

During the large-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the city of Nova Kakhovka was under Russian occupation. On November 1, the Russian invaders robbed the Nova Kakhovka Art Gallery and took away all the art collections: works of painting, graphics, sculptures (more than 1,000 works of art).

The Oleshky Museum of Local Lore was opened in 1962 in the house of the secretary of the Oleshky city administration, Tsyurupa, where his son Oleksandr was born in 1870, a future Soviet party figure, head of State Planning and People's Commissar of Trade.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the memorial museum named after Tsyurupa was repurposed as a museum of local history.

It is a museum complex of historical, local history and ethnographic directions.

The Oleshky sands are the largest sand massif in Europe, which is sometimes incorrectly called the largest European desert.

The sand arena, about 15 kilometers in diameter (161,000 hectares), consists of barkhans (kuchuguri) about 5 meters high, covered with rare vegetation. The name Oleshky sands comes from the nearby town of Oleshky.

Semi-deserts were formed in the lower reaches of the Dnipro in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of massive uncontrolled livestock grazing, which destroyed the vegetation that bound the sands, and also as a result of almost complete deforestation. All this time, sand consolidation works were carried out. Currently, the spread of the desert has been stopped with the help of large areas of pine forest around the entire perimeter.

In Soviet times, the Oleshky sands were used as a military airfield for bombing. Due to the fact that many unexploded ammunition remained in the sands, formally the access of civilians to the territory was prohibited, but practically there were no obstacles to visiting until recently. In 2010, the Oleshky Sands National Park was created here.

Near the village of Proletarka, there is a convenient viewing platform, the coordinates of which are given below.

Since 2016, the Oleshky sands have again been used as a military training ground, access to the territory is closed.

The original monument in the form of a wooden bell was installed in Oleshky next to the place where the Oleshky Zaporizhzhia Sich existed in 1711-1728.

It was founded at the confluence of the Kinka River with the Lazniuk River by the Zaporizhzhia Cossacks, who moved from under the oppression of the Russian Tsar to the protectorate of the Crimean Khanate. Here the chieftain of Kost Hordiyenko and the son of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk Hryhoriy, whom his father sent to the Zaporizhzhians on a secret mission, discussed plans for the liberation of Ukraine. In 1728, dissatisfied with the oppression of the Tatars, the Zaporizhzhians left Oleshky Sich and returned to Zaporizhzhia.

The ruins of the palace of Prince Petro Trubetsky in Kozatske are one of the few surviving noble estates of the Kherson region.

The palace was built in the style of the French Renaissance on the high bank of the Dnipro. The main entrance with a stone gate and a corner fortress tower faces the river. Retaining walls with archbutanes support the general style of defensive architecture. One of the wings is made in pseudo-Gothic style.

The palace complex is located on the territory of a large, but extremely neglected park. Most of the buildings are in ruins. Currently, the palace is owned by Prince Trubetsky OJSC, restoration is planned.

The age-old oak in Shevchenkivskyi Park is one of the symbols of Kherson. The oldest park in the city was laid out by order of Prince Potomkin Tavriysky in 1785, but in the 19th century the trees were cut down, turning this place into a parade ground, where horse races were held.

In 1869, the park was revived on the initiative of the vice-governor Denys Karnovych. Before the revolution, the park was called Denysovsky in his honor.

The compositional center of the park is a huge petioled oak, according to legend, planted by Emperor Oleksandr II, although the tree was planted by Karnovych. The rays of eight shady alleys diverge from the tree in different directions, one of which leads to the church of Saint Fedir Ushakov.

The house-museum of the self-taught artist Polina Rayko was opened in her native Oleshky in 2004, after her death.

Polina Rayko, a master of naïve art, a poorly educated village woman, began to create at the age of 69 after a series of life tragedies - the loss of her husband and daughter, the imprisonment of her son. In order not to feel alone in an empty house, she began to paint the walls with murals. By the end of her life, she managed to paint all five rooms: the walls, ceilings, doors of the house, as well as the porch and gate of her yard. In her works secular, Christian and pagan symbols are intertwined.

The house-museum of Polina Rayko is cared for by the Polina Rayko Charitable Foundation.

On the night of June 6, 2023, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian troops blew up the dam of the Kakhovka HPP, which caused a catastrophic flooding of the lower Dnipro. As a result, the house-museum of Polina Rayko was completely flooded by the waters of the Dnipro.

Prince Trubetskoi Winery, which is also called "Prince Trubetskoi Chateau", is an ancient winery that produces wines according to classical technology. It is located in the village of Vesele near the urban-type village of Kozatske in the Kherson region.

Wine production in the lower reaches of the Dnipro was started by Prince Petro Trubetskoi, who owned these lands at the end of the 19th century. His relative, the chief winemaker of Crimea Lev Holitsyn, convinced the prince to engage in winemaking. In 1898, Trubetsky planted vineyards on the Dnipro slopes, built wine cellars for 180,000 buckets, and built a winery not far from his palace in Kozatske. Rhine Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon were chosen as the main grape varieties. White (rainwine, riesling, saber), red (lafite and cabernet), dry (sautern and claret), strong (port wine), and dessert (dried riesling and others) wines were produced here. The best varieties received the "Grand Prix" at the world exhibition in Paris in 1900, in 1902 - the first All-Russian prize.

In Soviet times, the winery in Vesely became famous for the wines "Oksamyt Ukrayiny", "Naddnipryanske" and "Perlyna stepu". For some time, Prince Trubetsky's winery specialized in the production of wine materials for champagne wine factories. In 2005, reconstruction was carried out, a new workshop was built, and modern production was established.

Now the Chateau of Prince Trubetskoi has a developed tourist infrastructure, which includes a museum, a derustation hall, a restaurant, and a hotel. Before the large-scale Russian invasion, tours were conducted to Prince Trubetskoi's estate, the company's production workshops and wine cellars (constant temperature +14 degrees). Wine tastings were offered.

During the Russian occupation in 2022, Prince Trubetskoi winery was looted by the invaders. The winery building was damaged by shelling.

The building of the Central RAGS was erected in 1896 for the Kherson Public Library. The construction was carried out on donations from the people of Kherson, part of the funds was allocated by the city administration.

The building was designed in the neoclassical style by the architect Mykola Tolvinsky. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Kherson public library was often visited by Borys Serhyeyev, the future writer Lavrenyev.

The first exhibition of the Kherson Museum of Antiquities was located here. The library served its purpose until 1987, when it was decided to house the city registry office in the building.

The church of the righteous Petro Kalnyshevskyi in Heroiske (former Prohnoyi) was built in 1898 at the expense of a descendant of the Cossack-elder family, Hryhoriy Kapusta, as a church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God.

The church, half-destroyed during the years of Soviet power, is currently being restored by the community of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In 2016, at the request of the local religious community. the name of the church was changed from the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God to the righteous Petro Kalnyshevskyi.

The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was founded on the initiative of Prince Hrihory Potemkin to attract foreigners to Kherson.

The first Catholic church in the name of the Savior, built in 1787, was adobe. A stone church was built on this site in the 1820s, later a spire was built above the bell tower. A Roman Catholic church school and a society for helping poor Catholics operated here.

In 1918, the first service was held in Ukrainian. In 1931, the church was closed, workshops were placed in it, then a children's cinema was opened.

In 1994, the temple was returned to believers and reconstructed. Today it is the Roman Catholic church of the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.