Attractions of Bohodukhiv district

Nataliyivka Park is a masterpiece of garden and park architecture of the 19th century.

The estate on the bank of the Merchyk River was founded by the famous industrialist and philanthropist Ivan Kharytonenko, naming it in honor of his youngest granddaughter Nataliya (married Horchakova). Construction was continued by his son Pavlo.

A manor house, outbuildings, outbuildings, and a playpen were built among the ancient timber (some trees are up to 300 years old). The park was surrounded by an elegant fence with a front gate in the form of a wide arch with a pointed roof.

The decoration of the estate is the Transfiguration Church (1913), built by the academician of architecture Oleksiy Shchusev, who designed the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kazan railway station in Moscow. The temple is made in the style of Pskov-Novhorod Orthodox architecture. The walls are decorated with ornaments and relief medallions by the sculptor Oleksandr Matvyeyev, the sculpture "Crucifixion" by Serhiy Konenkov is located near the southern wall. According to legend, an exact copy of the Transfiguration Church is located in Nice, but in fact Shchusev designed a similar church in Bari, Italy.

During the Second World War, the main building of Nataliyivka Estate was destroyed. Tuberculosis sanatorium "Volodymyrivskyi" was located in the outbuildings. Partial restoration has been carried out in recent years.

Currently, one of the buildings of the manor is in the care of the National Nature Park "Slobozhansky", repair work is underway, the creation of a visitor center and a museum of ecological and nature conservation orientation is planned.

Sharivka Palace and Park Complex, known as "Koenig Castle", is one of the best aristocratic estates of Slobozhanshchyna, a monument of cultural heritage of national importance.

Retired second major Sava Olkhovsky (according to other sources, his son, court councilor Petro Olkhovsky) slaughtered the manor house in Sharivka on the banks of the Merchyk River in 1836, building a manor house and breaking up a large park on the slope of a two-kilometer beam. Later, the estate in Sharivka passed to the Goebenstein brothers, who enriched the park with many exotic plants, built a church and a school.

At the end of the 19th century, the new owner, a German sugar confectioner Leopold Koenig, overhauled the Sharivka Palace, giving it a neo-Gothic feature with Renaissance elements. Two stylized defensive towers give the building the look of a medieval castle. The main entrance is made in the same style: a gate with fortress teeth, a guard house with arrow windows, a pointed watchtower.

Sharivka Park was reconstructed by the famous park builder Georg Kufaldt, who decorated it with terraces, stairs, a swimming pool, fountains and a stone bridge. The main element of the park was a wide lime alley.

From 1925 until recently, the estate housed a tuberculosis sanatorium, visits were limited.

Currently, it is the Palace and Park Complex "Sadyba" run by the regional utility company "Znakhidka". In recent years, some restoration and conservation work has been carried out. The rich interiors of the two-story Library with a balcony and massive cabinets, the Blue Hall with a painted ceiling and choirs for the orchestra, some other rooms with coffered ceilings, marble fireplaces, tiled stoves, stucco and paintings have been preserved.

Entrance to the territory is paid, excursions are conducted.

The palace in Staryi Merchyk was built in 1786-1788 by the active state councilor Hryhoriy Shydlovsky, a representative of one of the noblest noble families of the Kharkiv region.

On the site of a somewhat modest parental home, he built a magnificent palace in the style of Louis XVI. Presumably, the project was developed by Kharkiv provincial architect Petro Yaroslavskyi (according to other versions - Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli or Vasyl Bazhenov).

The complex belongs to the earliest architectural monuments of the transition from baroque to classicism. A large two-story building on a high plinth, oval in plan, with one facade facing the courtyard with stone wings, and the other facing the parterre with stairs leading to the shore of the pond. The palace had several drawing rooms and a magnificent ballroom decorated with moldings.

The manor park was laid out in 1724, then expanded. Its landscape was formed by age-old trees, ponds, green lawns, gazebos and bridges. Oak, maple, ash, linden grow. There are also silver and Canadian spruce, and a straight-coniferous pine. A total of about 30 species and forms of trees.

The decline of the estate began after Shyldovsky sold it to Count Orlov-Denisov. In the second half of the 19th century, the new owner, entrepreneur Yevhen Dukhivskyi, cared more about the development of the economy.

In the 1920s, an agricultural school was located in the manor, and the palace was seriously re-planned. Since 1997, the palace has remained ownerless.

Krasnokutsk Arboretum is one of the oldest arboreal parks of Ukraine.

It was founded in 1809 (according to other sources, in 1793) by the biologist Ivan Karazin, brother of the founder of Kharkiv University Vasyl Karazin, in their family estate. The father of the Karazin brothers, Nazar Karazin, a colonel in the Russian army, received these lands from Catherine II. His son Ivan Nazarovych carried out reclamation works on the outskirts of the former military settlement, on the site of the Cossack Peter and Paul Monastery (1664), and established an arboretum here.

While traveling the world, he collected many seedlings and seeds of rare plants, which he then acclimatized. Among them: ginkgo, Canadian poplar, western sycamore, Lowa fir, Weymouth pine, Japanese quince, black walnut and others.

Currently, the Krasnokutsk Arboretum is part of the Krasnokutsk Research Station of Horticulture, free entry. The caves of the Peter and Paul Monastery have been preserved on the territory.

The first wooden church of All Saints was founded in Staryi Merchyk in 1680.

It was replaced by a new stone church in 1778 at the expense of Count Shydlovsky.

During the Soviet era, the temple was closed, revived only in 1994.

Nearby in the park, traces of a pagan cult were found: a stone woman and a stone altar.

The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built in Malyzhyne in 1823 by the local landowner Kostyantyn Pavlov.

In 1833, a stone belfry was erected.

The ancient icon of the Mother of God "Recovery of the Dead", transferred from the former wooden temple, was kept here.

Currently, the Church of the Assumption is in a dilapidated state.

The Young Bohodukhiv Museum of Local Lore is housed in a 1970s building.

The fixed fund has 3374 units of storage.

The exhibits are located in 5 halls: natural history, archeology, everyday life, World War II, modern Bohodukhiv region.

The Church of the Ascension is the only church in Zolochiv that survived out of the four that existed before the Soviet-Ukrainian war.

Founded in 1884.

In Soviet times, the church was closed, but in the post-war period it resumed its activities.

The Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin in Parkhomivka was part of the Podhorichani count estate.

The first wooden church in Parkhomivka was founded back in 1704, in its place Count Ivan Podhorichani built a five-domed wooden church after 1769, and in 1808 the widow of Count Varvara Podhorichani (Shydlovska) decided to build a new stone church .

The single-domed church in the style of classicism was designed by Kharkiv provincial architect Petro Yaroslavskyi, who is considered the founder of the Ukrainian school of classicist architecture. An interesting feature of the architecture of the Intercession Church is two bell towers. According to experts, this is a peculiar interpretation of the three-domed church, an echo of the Ukrainian folk architecture of the 17th century.

A feature of the interior is the choirs in the three branches of the building. The painting on the sails and above the main entrance has been preserved.

In the 1960s, the church was closed and turned into a warehouse. Only 50 years later, the Intercession Church began to be used for its intended purpose again.

The National Literary and Memorial Museum of Hryhoriy Savvych Skovoroda is located in the former estate of the Kovalevsky landowners, where the great Ukrainian philosopher died in 1794 (according to other sources, in the building of the former church-parish school).

The house has a memorial room - a "quiet cell", where Skovoroda loved to work and in which he ended his life.

In a cozy, well-planned park, maintained in perfect condition, preserved memorable places associated with the great thinker. This is the skeleton of a huge 700-year-old oak on the shore of a pond with a memorial sign (1972, sculptors Lyubov Zhukovska, Dmytro Sova), under the cover of which wrote a philosopher, a well and a huge wooden landlord's barn, on a wide lawn in front of which events organized by the museum are held.

Not far from the manor house in the park is the grave of Hryhoriy Skovoroda. On the stylized tombstone under the roadside stone (1972, sculptors Lyubov Zhukovska, Dmytro Sova) carved a laconic and surprisingly capacious, worthy of a great philosopher author's epitaph: "The world caught me, but did not catch." A modest monument to Hryhoriy Skovoroda was erected at the entrance to the square (1972, sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze, architect Vasyl Hnyezdilov).

During the large-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the museum building was destroyed by a direct hit from a Russian missile. Part of the exposition was destroyed, but the most valuable exhibits were not damaged.

The Parkhomivka Art Museum named after Panas Lunov is a unique art gallery, nicknamed the "rural Hermitage".

The gallery was created in 1955 by village teacher Panas Lunov as a branch of the school museum. The exhibition was based on paintings bought by Lunov at a post-war Kharkiv flea market, as well as donated by Kharkiv artists. Later, the collection was replenished with canvases donated to the village gallery by many museums of the USSR.

At the request of Lunov, the unique exposition was placed in the former palace of Count Pidhorichani, which previously housed the office of the sugar factory.

Today, the Parkhomivka Museum collection includes about 6,000 exhibits: paintings by Rembrandt, Gauguin, Van Dyck, Benoit, Manet, Bryullov, Shishkin, Aivazovsky, Levitan, Repin, Vasnetsov, Roerich, Malevich, drawings by Shevchenko, posters by Mayakovsky and others.

The pearl of the collection are four works by Pablo Picasso, donated to the museum by Illya Erenburh, including the famous painting "Dove of the World", which became a symbol of the anti-war movement.

The estate of the Pavlov landowners was founded in Malyzhyne at the beginning of the 19th century.

The maison house was built by Kostyantyn Pavlov in 1823 according to the typical project of a city house approved in 1809. An outhouse and a storeroom have also been preserved.

In Soviet times, a home for the elderly was placed in the estate. Currently, it is the Malyzhyne Psychoneurological Boarding School. Visiting is complicated.

The church in the name of Saints Borys and Hlib in Vodiane was built in 1905 on the site of the wooden Borys and Hlib church, founded in 1819.

The construction was carried out by the architect Volodymyr Nemkin at the expense of Kharkiv University professor Fedir Zelenohorskyi and philanthropist Serafima Klyucharyova.

In 1932, the church was closed and turned into a warehouse, but in 1942 services were resumed in it. In 1984-1985, the local authorities planned to blow up the church, but the community managed to defend the church, although it was closed again.

In 1991. services were resumed, and in 1997 the church was transformed into the Saints Borys and Hlib Monastery.

The icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, which was completely renovated in 1997, is kept here.

In the yard there is a well with healing holy water.

The Museum of the Century History of the Sharivka Settlement from 2018 is located in the building of the manager of the Sharivka estate, sugar breeder Leopold Koenig.

The two-storey brick house was built in 1910 according to the project of architect Jacobi on the territory of the farmyard of the Koenig estate.

The museum exposition is created by enthusiasts on a voluntary basis.

"Singing Terraces" is the name given to an orchard with an unusual layout in the form of a huge amphitheater, which was laid on the banks of the Merla River in the 19th century by the famous sugar factory Ivan Kharytonenko.

The local climatic conditions did not allow exotic varieties of trees to be grown here, but an original solution was found. Six south-facing terraces were built on the slope of the stream, which were illuminated by the sun throughout the day. The stone masonry itself also accumulated heat, which made it possible to grow southern fruit trees here.

The amphitheater garden in Horodnie has another feature – unique acoustics. Even quiet sounds can be heard at a distance of up to 60 meters. According to legend, the famous bassist Fedir Shalyapin gave a concert here. In windy weather, one gets the impression that the terraces themselves emit melodious sounds, which is why they were nicknamed "Singing Terraces".