Attractions of Kakhovka district

Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve is the oldest reserve complex in Ukraine. Founded at the end of the 19th century by Fridrikh Falts-Feyn as a private "Chapli" reserve on 500 acres of land.

Here, a large area of pristine Kovylo-Typchak steppe has been preserved in its original form - Velikiy Chapelsky pod, where herds of wild animals are freely kept. In conditions close to natural, you can see 250 species of mammals and birds from all continents. In particular, Przhevalsky's horse was saved from disappearance here. The pride of the reserve is the African kanna antelope, which was tamed. The steppe is especially beautiful during the flowering of the nightshade at the end of spring.

The complex includes a zoo (1886) with sections of hummingbirds, ostriches and ungulates, as well as a dendrological park with artificial lakes (1885), for the aric irrigation system of which Falz-Fein received a gold medal at an exhibition in Paris. 14 Polovtsian stone statues (XI-XII centuries) are collected on the territory.

The manor of Falts-Feyn has been restored.

Photo-safari excursions to the Veliky Chapelsky paddocks on minibuses or horse-drawn carriages are organized upon prior reservation (from May to September, only in dry weather).

The reservoir on the northern shore of Sivash near Hryhorivka is called the Lemurian lake or simply "salt pit".

According to local legend, the salt lake is a submerged sinkhole at the site of a bomber that crashed in the 1960s. According to another legend, these are the remains of the legendary Lemurian Sea, which allegedly existed millions of years ago.

The water in the lake has an unusual pink color and is rapa - a saturated salt solution. Rapa is considered medicinal because it contains minerals, salts of magnesium and potassium chloride, sodium iodide, and magnesium bromide. Sivas mud is also used for treatment.

The shore of Lemurian Lake is equipped with showers with fresh water, gazebos for relaxation, and a children's playground.

The Literary Memorial Museum of the Ukrainian poet Anatoliy Bakhuta was opened in 1992 in the house where he lived since childhood in Nova Kakhovka.

The exposition includes 640 of more than 3,000 exhibits, including 1,765 manuscripts.

Graphic portraits of the poet's parents, friendly cartoons and self-portraits, drawn by him in pencil in 1970-1980, are kept here.

The exposition of the museum of Nova Kakhovka, which opened in 1990, is dedicated to the short history of the young southern city of energy workers.

More than 3,000 exhibits in 5 halls tell about different periods of the history of the Kakhovka region, starting from the time of the Scythian kingdom of Atheus.

A separate exposition is devoted to the creation of the Kakhovka hydroelectric junction and the South Crimean Canal.

The city of Nova Kakhovka was under Russian occupation on the very first day of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Viktor Vasylyev, the director of the City History Museum in Nova Kakhovka, which is a branch of the Kherson Regional Museum of Local Lore, joined the enemy and helped the Russians loot the museum. The museum building was seriously damaged as a result of Russian shelling.

The family recreation center with a mini-zoo "Kazkova Dibrova" was organized in the central park of Nova Kakhovka by local entrepreneur and sculptor-carver Mykhaylo Navrotsky in the mid-1990s.

The owner is the author of 150 wooden sculptures of fairy-tale heroes that decorate the well-kept park with ponds and streams. In the zoo you can see mouflons, peacocks, owls, wild geese and many other animals.

There is a cafe with a green summer terrace on the territory, where you can taste Ukrainian and Tatar cuisine.

On the night of June 6, 2023, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian troops blew up the Kakhovska HPP. "Kazkova Dibrova" was flooded as a result of the explosion of the HPP dam. About 300 animals died in the zoo. The park itself was destroyed.

The Church of the Holy Intercession in Chaplynka was built in 1844.

A parochial school operated at the church.

Today it is an active Orthodox church.

Kakhovka Historical Museum is a branch of the Kherson Museum of Local Lore.

Opened in 1957. Located in a spacious room in the center of Kakhovka. There are more than 7,000 exhibits in the funds.

The museum's expositions tell about the main stages of the history of the city and the region, about the events of the Soviet-Ukrainian and World War II, about the creation of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant and the Kakhovka irrigation system, etc.

The most interesting are materials about the Cossack campaigns on Islam-Kermen and the storming of Kizi-Kermen, samples of weapons of Zaporozhian Cossacks and Russian soldiers (flintlock rifles, pistols, sabers, daggers), trophy sabers, guns, nuclei of XVI-XVII centuries, photocopy Borys Sheremetyev to Emperor Peter I about the storming of the fortress and so on.

During the Russian occupation of Kakhovka in 2022, the Russian invaders looted the Kakhovka Historical Museum.

The Korsunka Monastery of the Mother of God near Kakhovka was founded in 1785 on the lands of Prince Potemkin Tavriyskyi as a co-religionist (Old Believer) monastery.

According to legend, children found an icon of the Mother of God at this place, and when they tried to take it away, the icon became heavy and did not budge, thus indicating the location of the future abode.

By 1848, when the monastery became Orthodox, the complex already included 5 stone churches, the first of which was consecrated in 1802, a refectory, a dormitory with cells.

Before the Bolshevik coup of 1917, the Korsunka Men's Monastery, along with the Byzyukiv Men's Monastery and the Annunciation Women's Monastery, was one of the three most respected monasteries of the Kherson Diocese. During Soviet times, the monastery was closed, the churches were destroyed. Parts of the walls, the western gate surmounted by a baroque pediment, and the round northeastern tower with a tented finish have survived. The monks returned here only in 1999. Work is underway to revive the monastery.

The Chaplynka museum of local history is located in a park area in the center of the city.

Ivan Maksymov, the director of the Chervonopolyanska School, was the founder and first director. As the basis of the exposition, he put his own collection of rural equipment and household items, which students and other residents of the village helped to collect.

Currently, the exposition is housed in 8 halls, where nature and the distant past of the region, the times of the revolution and the Soviet-Ukrainian war, collectivization, World War II, as well as the interior of a village house with towels and antique objects are reproduced. There is a furnace, a spinning wheel, earthenware, a chest, a baby cradle, icons, and more.

WARNING! On the night of April 1, 2017, a fire broke out in the museum, which destroyed the museum exposition and part of the funds.

The "Legendary Tachanka" monument in Kakhovka is a grandiose sculptural composition in honor of the mobile firing point, which was widely used during the Soviet-Ukrainian war.

Tachanka was widely celebrated in Soviet literature and art. The units of Nestor Makhno anarchist army were the first to use the "Maxim" machine gun mounted on a horse-drawn carriage in combat operations, but the tachanka became famous while serving in the ranks of the Red Army.

In 1967, a majestic monument of the work of Leningrad sculptors Lokhovytsin, Mykhaylenko, Rodionov and architect Poltoratskyi was erected in the steppe near Kakhovka.

The bronze monument weighs 120 tons.

The monument "Legendary Tachanka" is subject to dismantling in accordance with the law of Ukraine on decommunization.

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 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 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.

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.