Attractions of Chortkiv district

The museum room of the world-famous Ukrainian, Canadian, Swiss economist, public figure, philanthropist, former member of the Club of Rome Bohdan Havrylyshyn has been operating in the village of Koropets on the first floor of the House of Culture since 2019.

Bohdan Havrylyshyn was born in Koropets in 1926. He was an advisor to three presidents and 14 prime ministers of Ukraine.

In the museum exhibition you can see the table at which Bohdan Havrylyshyn worked, his personal belongings, awards and many photos from different stages of his life.

Bokhit (Bohyt) is an ancient pagan settlement on the mountain of the same name in Medobory. Some elements, such as the local dolmen, date back to the 6th-5th centuries BC, while the main buildings date back to the 9th-10th centuries.

The length of the settlement is 300 meters, the width is 50-100 meters. In the center of the temple, an eight-petaled figure with indentations on the edges was found, paved with stone. A similar object has an analogy with the elements of the Perun temple in Novhorod. A square earthen recess for the idol was discovered near the shrine.

In 1848, a Zbruchansky stone idol was found on the bank of the Zbruch River (Lychkivtsi village district), the origin of which is associated with the Bohit settlement. There is an opinion that after the baptism of Rus, most pagans left their lands and moved their spiritual center from Kyiv to these places. Confirmation of this theory is the presence of other hillforts nearby (Zvenyhorod, Hovda) and its satellites.

The "Medobory" Nature Reserve has developed a tourist route and laid an ecological trail through the hillforts.

The Museum of Bolshevik Terror, Political Prisoners and Repression in Chortkiv is located in the premises of the diocesan administration of the Buchach Eparchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The initiative for its creation belongs to the former UPA liaison officer, public activist Mariia Shtepa.

In the basements of the former monastery of the Sisters of Mercy (now the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary Church), where during the Soviet occupation the NKVD detention centers were located, the "Calvary" exhibition is located. The interior of the prison cell has been recreated here, the hiding place of the repressed Greek Catholic Church has been reconstructed, and a church chapel has been equipped.

The exposition "Repressed Church" collects materials about the blessed Bishop Velichkosky. Authentic items from the 1940s, photos of the repressed, as well as symbolic pieces of land from places sprinkled with Ukrainian blood in the fight against the Russian occupiers are presented: Baturyn, Berestechko, Kruty, Uman, Makivka, etc.

A separate exhibition "The Chortkiv Offensive" tells about the offensive military operation of the Ukrainian Galician Army in 1919, which became one of the most significant events of the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918-1919.

The Brush Museum opened in 2025 in the premises of the Zabolotivka Starostvo on the initiative of the starost of the village of Zabolotivka, Mariia Hadzhala. The exhibition is dedicated to local brush makers and their craft - brush making, which has long been widespread in this village.

The exhibition presents ancient tools and instruments of brush makers, sheaves of local sedge, which served as the main material for making bristles, and samples of finished products.

The interior of the museum hall is decorated with other antiques - a bambetl, century-old images, household items, samples of local embroidery from the villagers' hiding places. A separate corner is dedicated to local participants in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

By prior arrangement, the museum can organize a master class on making brushes.

Budaniv Castle was built at the beginning of the 17th century by Yan Khodorovsky on the site of a wooden castle burned by the Tatars, built at the end of the 16th century by Voivode Yakub Budzanovsky, whose name the village still bears.

The new stone castle on top of the hill was quadrangular in plan, with four round corner towers around the perimeter. During its existence, the castle was captured and destroyed several times by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi's troops, as well as by Turkish troops. It was restored every time, and in the middle of the 18th century, the new owners of Potocki Castle rebuilt the western part of the fortifications into a church.

To this day, in addition to the church, two round towers and part of the castle walls have been preserved. A women's psychiatric hospital has been located on the territory of the castle since Soviet times, but the castle can be freely viewed both from the outside and from the courtyard.

The ruins of the castle tower in Ozeriany are located in the very center of the village near the crossroads.

The castle probably dates back to the 17th century, when Ozeriany belonged to the Polish king. The castle controlled the salt road that runs through the village. The walls of the surviving tower are 1 meter thick. The rectangular tower measures 10 by 7 meters.

Only the first tier and the dungeon have survived.

The cave monastery in Monastyrok was founded in the 9th-10th centuries by hermit monks on the site of an ancient Slavic pagan temple.

It is noticeable that human hands put effort into the arrangement of the natural cave. A huge stone overhanging the entrance to the cave is supported by several columns made of flat stone blocks.

In the temple there is an image of Jesus, which, according to legend, came to the monks in the form of a play of light and shadow. They drew this image with paint and got what we can see now.

An ancient altar is also preserved in the cave, which is still used for its intended purpose. It is decorated with icons and lamps. Archeologically, it has been proven that the temple was lined with wood, had a wooden floor and may have been heated.

At the end of the 17th century, the temple was destroyed by fire, and in the 18th century it was destroyed by an earthquake.

Back in the 16th century, the Basilian Monastery was founded nearby. The complex includes the Ascension Church (XVI-XVIII centuries) and monastery cells. Near the entrance to the cave lies a stone with a cross carved on it, which is called the "stone of Dovbush". Perhaps it was a pagan altar.

The early Christian cave temple near the village of Stinka in Ternopil region belongs to the 12th-13th centuries.

The natural cave of karst origin is located on the left bank of the Dniester at an altitude of 15 meters. On the second level, an artificial room measuring approximately 8 by 9 meters was cut out of the travertine rock. In the center of the eastern wall is an altar with a solar sign in the form of a swastika. Crosses and other Christian and pagan symbols are depicted on the walls.

Probably, the temple existed even in pagan times, and with the advent of Christianity it became a cave monastery.

The Chortkiv Museum Residence (formerly the Chortkiv Local Lore Museum) has been located in the building of the former children's library, not far from the Chortkiv Castle, since 2022.

The residence was founded in 1976 as a non-profit local history museum. Initially, the institution was located in a building from the first half of the 20th century on Zelena Street. The museum's main collections include over 10,000 items.

The Chortkiv Museum Residence features exhibitions dedicated to different periods of the region's history. In particular, various archaeological materials tell about the life of people in ancient times, about ancient crafts and industries.

The history of the Ukrainian army and the national liberation struggle in the Chortkiv region is highlighted. A separate exhibition tells about the consequences of the Bolshevik terror and the expulsion of the Nazi occupiers.

The nature department of the museum displays the flora and fauna of the region.

The Dniester Canyon National Nature Park was created in 2010 to preserve valuable natural and historical-cultural complexes and objects of the forest-steppe zone in the middle course of the Dniester River.

It occupies an area of ​​10,000 hectares within the Chortkiv district of the Ternopil region. There are layers (walls) containing ancient fossilized remains of flora and fauna, which are about 500 million years old.

The pride of the Dniester Canyon National Nature Park is travertine rocks with caves and grottoes. About 50 large and small caves are known, including some of the longest in the world: Ozerna (105 kilometers), Optymistychna (230 kilometers).

A large number of rare plants, animals, and birds can be found on steep rocky shores and picturesque islands. Relict forest, rocky and alkaline-steppe vegetation has been preserved.

Popular tourist routes to the Dzhurynskyi Waterfall and in the "Hlody" tract to the "Farinnikova Krynytsia" spring.

The wooden church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of the Lord is located in the southern part of the city of Kopychyntsi, in the former suburb of Kutets.

It was built in 1630 (legend attributes the construction to Ukrainian Cossacks, although the city was under the control of the troops of Bohdan Khmelnytsky a little later - in 1648-1652).

There is a small wooden bell tower nearby.

A 400-year-old linden tree (Golden Linden) growing near the road to the Zolotyi Potik is a witness to a historical event - the signing of the Buchach Peace Treaty with Turkey in 1672, which was humiliating for Poland.

The day before, the Turkish army captured Buchach and began to threaten the central regions of Poland from here. According to the peace treaty, the eastern part of Ukraine with Podillya was declared an independent state under the protectorate of Turkey.

According to local legend, some hermit settled in these places about 200-300 years ago. There are conjectures about the honorable origin of this man, but the reasons for which he was forced to renounce worldly life are not known. During the first four years, he hollowed out a cave cell in the ancient rock in which he prayed. According to legend, the hermit was killed and buried next to the cell in a stone niche.

In the 1990s, the place was restored. Every year, believers from nearby villages come to pray on the Trinity.

"Hermit's Cave" is part of the complex of monuments of the ecological trail of the same name, developed for tourists by the "Medobory" nature reserve. Also nearby are the ancient pagan settlement of Zvenyhorod and the Perlyna cave.

You can visit these sights independently by following a marked route from the village of Krutyliv, or accompanied by employees of the reserve.

The neglected palace in Kolyndiany with two castle-like towers is actually built on the basis of a medieval castle built by the Stamensky nobles in the 15th century (according to other sources, in the 17th century).

At the beginning of the 19th century, the half-ruined castle in Kolyndiany passed to the Albinovsky family, from whom it was inherited by the nobleman Kornel Horodyskyi. In 1840, the new owner reconstructed the castle towers, and between them he built a two-story palace in the style of late classicism. Its front facade is decorated with a large portico with four columns of the Ionic order, and on the park side is a risalite, which used to have a balcony overlooking the landscaped park. The entrance gate probably survived from the former castle.

During the First World War, the palace was badly damaged, but in the interwar period it was restored by the last owner, Lyudvik Horodyskyi.

In Soviet times, the building housed a technical school. Until recently, a tractor crew was stationed near the estate, but now the Horodysky Palace is abandoned.

Hrymailiv landscape park with an area of 13 hectares is located on the river bank in the center of Hrymailiv village.

It was founded in the 18th and 19th centuries around the palace built on the basis of the 17th-century Hrymailiv Castle by Count Leonard Pininsky. The last owner of the palace was the Volyansky landowners. The palace was completely dismantled at the end of the Second World War. Only fragments of foundations and ruins of basements with arched ceilings have survived.

17 species of trees and shrubs grow in the park. At the entrance to the park, there is a monument to the native of Hrymailiv Ivan Pulyuy (1996; sculptor Mykola Obezyuk), the pioneer of X-ray radiation, as well as a monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko (1956).