Attractions of Sumy region

The majestic Savior Transfiguration Cathedral on a pedestrian street in the very center of Sumy combines Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism elements in its image.

The Transfiguration Cathedral in Sumy was built in 1776-1788 on the site of a wooden church of the 17th century. The 56-meter baroque bell tower with English chimes was added later. The cathedral acquired its modern appearance after a major reconstruction, carried out in 1882-1892 according to the project of the authoritative Kharkiv architect Mykhaylo Lovtsov. Cast-iron figures of the apostles Peter and Paul, as well as two identical figures of Saint Volodymyr the Great, and figures of the four evangelists: Luke, Mark, John and Matthew, are installed in the corners of the dome.

In the interior - an iconostasis made of white marble and Ural malachite, paintings on biblical themes by Volodymyr Makovsky. The main shrines are miraculous icons of the Tikhvin Mother of God and the Korsun Mother of God.

The cathedral belongs to the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate. Festive services are broadcast outside.

The ancient Church of the Three Holy Anastasies in Hlukhiv was founded in the 18th century by Hetman Ivan Skoropadskyi as a house church near the Hetman's estate.

Named after his wife Anastasiya. It was revived in 1884-1893 at the expense of the Tereshchenko family of sugar growers, becoming their ancestral tomb. Its forms resemble the Saint Volodymyr Cathedral in Kyiv, which was also built with the participation of the Tereshchenko family.

The project in the neo-Byzantine style was developed by architect Andriy Hun. Famous artists Svedomski, Pymonenko, Vereshchahin, Zhuravlyov, who also designed the Sain Volodymyr Cathedral, created masterpiece paintings based on sketches by Viktor Vasnetsov. A luxurious white marble iconostasis has been preserved.

In 2003, after a visit to the city by one of the descendants of the Tereshchenko family, a family crypt was discovered in the basement of the Three-Anastasies Cathedral. The founder of the family Artemiy Tereshchenko, his wife Yevfrosyniya, their sons Fedir and Mykola are buried here.

Today it is the cathedral church of the Konotop and Hlukhiv Diocese of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The forty-meter water tower is a business card of Hlukhiv. It can be seen for many kilometers from the city, is an expressive element of its architectural silhouette.

The water tower was built in 1927 on the site of the Putivl Gate of the Hlukhiv Fortress after a decision was made to create a city water supply. Unique in architecture - the round cone-shaped trunk in the upper part gently transitions into an extended two-tiered cylinder with rectangular windows.

An internal spiral staircase of 186 steps leads to the upper level with an observation deck that offers a magnificent view of the city and its picturesque surroundings. Access to the observation deck is open in summer.

The Yampil Local Lore Museum was founded in 2009. The museum is located on the territory of the Yampil Botanical Garden of local significance.

The museum collection includes about 1,700 exhibits. These are household items, dishes, regional folk clothing (girls' and women's costumes of Eastern Polissia (Yampil region) and Dnipro region (Poltava region), men's embroidered shirts), interior embroidery of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century, photos and audio library of the 20th century, household clocks of the second half of the 20th century, sculptural porcelain of the 1950s-1970s, etc.

The decoration of the folk clothing presented in the museum is the wedding costume of Yefrosinia Popravko from the Deriazhnia farm, which is more than 100 years old. The exposition is complemented by a selection of photographs of residents of the Yampil region in national clothing of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century.

The pottery exhibit features a unique clay spark arrester - a device that was placed on a thatched roof to prevent it from catching fire.

Konotop City Museum of Local Lore is one of the oldest and richest museums in Sumy region. It was founded in 1900 on the initiative of the prominent Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Lazarevsky, whose name the museum now bears. The paintings, books, ancient weapons, and manuscripts donated by Lazarevsky became his first exhibits.

Now the museum has almost 24 thousand exhibits. 9 exhibition halls cover the history, nature and ethnography of the region. Stone Age tools, vessels of the Bronze Age, ancient Rus and Cossack weapons, etc. are presented.

Among the most interesting exhibits: the chair (armchair) of Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky from the palace in Baturyn, the castle and the key to the gate of the Konotop fortress, the Gospel-aprakos of 1707 from the printing house of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.

The foyer presents works of art of Ukrainian and Western European art.

The facade of the museum is decorated with a mural with a portrait of Oleksandr Lazarevsky.

The Neo-Renaissance palace in Kyianytsia is considered one of the pearls of manor construction in Slobozhanshchyna.

It was built in 1890 by the Lishchynsky merchant family, who inherited Kiyanitsa from the rich sugar farmer Ivan Kharytonenko.

The two-story Kyianytsia Palace with an elegant tower, surrounded by an age-old park, looks especially romantic from the opposite bank of the pond. More than 70 species of trees and shrubs grow in Kyianytsia Park (56 hectares), among which you can find sycamores, ginkgos, silver firs, pines, lindens, maples and, of course, the main park-forming wood - oak. A small outhouse has also been preserved.

In Soviet times, the "Kyianytsia" recreation center was located on the territory of the Lishchynsky manor. Currently, the building is owned by Sumy National Agrarian University, partial restoration has been carried out.

The exposition of the local lore museum "Petro Chaykovsky and Ukraine" is located in the village of Nyzy in the manor house of the landowner Mykola Kondratyev, who was a guest of the outstanding composer Petro Chaykovsky every summer in 1871-1879.

Kondratyev was introduced to Chaykovsky by his friend Oleksiy Holitsyn from nearby Trostianets (there is also a Chaykovsky museum there). In Nysy, the composer worked on the operas "Cherevychky", "Oprychnyk", the Second and Third symphonies, created several piano pieces and romances. He dedicated the cycle of plays "Evening Dreams" to Kondratyev, "Salon Waltz" to his wife, "Little Waltz" to his daughter, and "Sentimental Waltz" to his governess.

The next owner of the manor, Dmytro Sukhanov, a sugar factory, demolished the wing where Chaykovsky lived during the reconstruction, but the main building was preserved.

In Soviet times, a sugar factory club was located here, then a high school. Since 1990, a part of the premises has housed a permanent exhibition-museum of Chaykovsky, recreating the atmosphere of the 19th century. The exposition dedicated to the composer is made up of the exhibits of the Sumy Regional Museum of Local Lore.

The building is in dire need of repair. Due to the lack of heating, the museum "Petro Chaykovsky and Ukraine" is open only in the summer.

The complex of educational institutions was built in Hlukhiv in the second half of the 19th century.

In 1874, a teachers' institute was opened, which trained teachers for the Chernihiv and Poltava provinces. In 1914, the outstanding film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko graduated from it. The artist Heorhiy Narbut studied at the Hlukhiv men's gymnasium.

Currently, all buildings are occupied by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Hlukhiv State Pedagogical University. It houses a historical and pedagogical museum.

The Tereshchenko House in Hlukhiv is the oldest surviving building of the architectural heritage of the family of famous sugar millers and patrons.

Prosperous merchant Artemiy Tereshchenko applied to the city authorities for permission to build a new two-story stone house in the historic center of Hlukhiv back in 1855. He was able to complete the construction of his Hlukhiv residence in the architectural forms of historicism only in 1866.

In the interior, the original decor is partially preserved: stucco ceilings, carved doors, tiled stoves, as well as stairs to the second floor, made in the technique of cast iron decorative casting.

In 1931, the All-Union Research Institute of Hemp was located here. Now it is the Research Station of Bask Cultures (Institute of Bask Cultures), where a hemp variety that does not contain narcotic substances was recently created. In the lobby, there is a small exhibition of hemp products: ropes, ropes, fabrics, clothes, shoes, etc.

The Historical and Ethnographic Museum "Batkivska Khata" (Parent's House) in Malyi Sambir opened in 2016 during the festival "We congratulate the strawberry - the first queen berry". The exposition was collected by the efforts of local residents.

You can get acquainted with the ancient history and development of the village of Malyi Sambir in the historical part of the exposition. The "Ukrainian Room" presents the interior of a traditional village hut with household items and samples of clothing from the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The exhibition hall displays products of local folk craftsmen.

The "Castle" Hillfort is located on Zamkova Mount above the Vorskla River, near the bridge at the entrance to the village of Kuzemyn, on its southeastern outskirts. It is part of the Kuzemyn fortification of the Bilsk Hillfort, a monument of fortifications of several eras.

The Kuzemyn fortification is located in the north of the Bilsk Hillfort of the 8th-5th centuries BC, its area is about 15 hectares. It is the least studied of the entire system of fortifications of the ancient Scythian Gelon.

In the early Middle Ages, part of the Scythian ramparts was used by the Siverians (bearers of the Romenska culture) to build a fortified settlement. Later, it became part of Kyivan Rus.

Between 1642 and 1648, Prince Jeremi Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki (Yarema Vyshnevetsky) built a wooden castle on the site of an old fortification from the Old Rus period and founded the border town of Kuzemyn (Kuzemchyn). During the War of Liberation, a Cossack hundred was formed in Kuzemyn, which was part of the Poltava and later Hadiach regiments. In 1708-1709, the fortifications of the Kuzemyn Castle were used by Swedish troops - the Helsingland regiment was based here.

Today, only earthen ramparts remain from the ancient defensive structures. The expedition of the Historical and Cultural Reserve "Bilsk" regularly conducts archaeological research.

The Memorial and Educational Complex in Memory of the Victims of Totalitarianism and Armed Conflict "Family Memory" opened in 2015 in one of the buildings of the former production association "Svema" in Shostka.

Created as a basis for studying the history of Europe on the example of the stories of the inhabitants of Shostka and the area - victims of World War II. The initiator of the museum was the artist of the Krolevets weaving factory Ivan Dudar, who in the early 2000s began collecting materials about the forced labor of Shostka residents at the Nazi powder factory "Aibia" in Germany. The project partners are the Documentation Center for the Study of the History of the Libenau Powder Plant and the UNF "Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation".

The exposition is located on two floors, with an area of over 700 square meters. Krolevets towels and Shostka film became the basis for the artistic decision. The exposition tells about the pre-war industrial history of Shostka, Stalin's repressions in the Shostka region, the Nazi occupation of the city during the Second World War, the post-war reconstruction of the city.

The museum is dedicated to Holocaust victims, Soviet prisoners of war, Ostarbeiters, prisoners of Nazi and Stalinist concentration camps.

The Family Memory Memorial and Educational Complex is a department of the Shostka Museum of Local Lore.

The Annunciation Church is one of the oldest stone buildings in Trostianets.

It was built at the expense of local nobles in 1750, when Trostianets belonged to the Nadarzhynskyi family, descendants of the royal clergyman Timofiy Nadarzhynskyi.

The Church of the Annunciation in Trostianets is made in the style of early classicism with baroque elements. It has a stocky silhouette.

Currently, the temple is active (UPC of the Moscow Patriarchate).

The private antiquities museum "Odyssey Moorage" in Sumy was founded in 2015 by the Sumy photographer, local historian and collector Serhiy Hutsan. His collection began with a selection of old photos and cameras. Over time, personal archaeological finds from different eras, as well as antiquities purchased in antique shops in different countries of the world, were added to them.

In 2022, the official opening of the museum took place in the new premises – the former house of the famous Hryhorievy family from Sumy. The exposition is located in four rooms and in the attic. The first room presents a variety of unsystematic things that characterize the creative search of the collector. The second hall is dedicated to the history of Voskresenska street from Cossack times to the 20th century. In the third room, a typical interior of the beginning of the 20th century is reproduced and an exposition dedicated to the Hryhorievy family is presented. Artifacts transformed by artists into art objects are displayed in the fourth hall. The "Svitlytsya" exhibition space in the attic has a changing exhibition.

Visiting the museum "Odyssey Moorage" is possible by prior appointment accompanied by the author's tour of the owner (one-hour tour of the exposition or two-hour tour of the exposition and Voskresenska and Soborna streets).

The museum has a shop called "Herodotus-Shop", where you can purchase copies of historical jewelry from Sumy master Danylo Sorokin.

Anton Chekhov's Memorial house-museum was created in Sumy in the noble estate of the Lyntvarov family (XVIII-XIX centuries), located in the Luka district.

In 1888-1889, the writer lived in the western wing of the estate - a one-story white house with six columns and a porch. The Chekhov used his Sumy impressions in the stories "Birthday", "Sad History", plays "Forester" and "Seagull". He wrote about the Lyntvarov estate: "The abbey and the Adriatic Sea are wonderful, but Luka and Psel are better."

The Chekhov Museum was opened on the anniversary of the writer's birth in 1960. The memorial exposition tells about Chekhov's life in Luka, about his medical care for local residents, about his creative work and trips to Ukraine.

The interiors of the living room and dining room, the guest rooms and the "Antosha's room", which served as Chekhov's bedroom and study, were restored.

Museum staff conducts local history tours.

The large eastern wing of the Lyntvarov estate, where the writer's family lived when Chekhov traveled to Sakhalin in 1890, has also been preserved.