Attractions of Kyiv region

The oldest administrative building of Vasylkiv is the County Present Place, built at the beginning of the 19th century. The headquarters of the Chernihiv regiment, which on January 10, 1826, joined the Decembrist uprising against the Russian autocracy and for the abolition of serfdom, was located here.

The uprising of the Chernihiv regiment, organized by the Southern Society of Decembrists, was led by lieutenant colonel Serhii Muravyov-Apostol and battalion commander Mykhailo Bestuzhev-Ryumin. The uprising was crushed within a week, and the organizers were later convicted and executed. A monument to the Decembrists was erected on the square opposite the building.

The building of the headquarters of the Chernihiv regiment is two-story, brick, plastered. The facade is typical of Russian classicism. The building was rebuilt several times. It housed the places of attendance, then the district police headquarters.

The local history department of the "Decembrists in Vasylkiv region" museum, which covered the activities of the Vasylkiv administration of the Southern Society (now under renovation), still worked in the two rooms. In particular, the cell in which Serhii Muravyov-Apostol and Mykhailo Bestuzhev-Ryumin were kept after the arrest was preserved.

The mansion of the timber producer Semen Mohylyovtsev in Pechersk Lypky in Kyiv is nicknamed the "Chocolate House" for the color and texture of the exterior walls.

Academician of architecture Volodymyr Nikolaev is called the author of the project. Unique interiors are made in various artistic styles (modern, renaissance, gothic, baroque).

In the Soviet period, the "Chocolate House" was used as a residence, then as the city's Palace of Marriages. Until recently, it was in a state of emergency.

Currently, the "Chocolate House" is a branch of the Kyiv Art Gallery National Museum.

The Chornobyl nuclear power plant was closed in 2000 due to the pressure of the world public on the leadership of Ukraine.

In 1986, the largest man-made accident in world history occurred at the 4th power unit of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which resulted in radiation contamination of large areas of Ukraine and Belarus. A protective sarcophagus was built over the destroyed power unit.

Visiting is possible only with special passes. Excursions from Kyiv are organized.

The Holy Intercession Church on Podil in Kyiv was built by the architect Ivan Hryhorovych-Barsky on the site of the ancient Armenian Church of the Intercession of the Holy Mother of God.

The church is made in the typical Ukrainian Baroque style. Nearby - a bell tower of the 18th century. Opposite - the bell tower of the church of Nicholas the Good (1716), destroyed in Soviet times, where the writer Mykhailo Bulhakov was married.

Divych-hora (Devich-hora, Divocha hora, Divych-Hill) is a high hill above the Dnipro in the center of the village of Trypillia. The name is probably connected with the ancient Slavic cult of a female deity - the progenitor goddess, the goddess Virgo (Diva).

On the top of Divych-hora, a settlement and burial ground of the Zarubinetska culture (II century BC), as well as an ancient Slavic temple (VI century) were discovered. There is an assumption that there was a sanctuary of a pagan virgin goddess. The altar consisted of nine hemispherical recesses in which ritual food was cooked.

From the top of Divych-hora, a wonderful panorama of Trypillia, the Dnipro and the surrounding hills opens up.

Only the remains of the park and wonderful views of the Dnipro remained from the "Lypky" manor of the Dolhoruky-Fadyeyevs family estate in Rzhyshchiv.

In the 18th century, the manor belonged to Lieutenant General Adolphe Franzovich de Bandre du Plessis. His daughter Henrietta de Brande y Plessis married Major General Prince Pavlo Dolhoruky, who retired at the beginning of the reign of Paul I. After the Franco-Russian war in 1812, the future Decembrists Bestuzhev-Ryumin, the Muravyov-Apostol brothers, Prince Trubetsky visited the Rzhyshchiv estate of the Dolhorukys.

Princess Olena Dolhorukova, who married Andriy Fadyeyev, was born here. For some time they lived in Rzhyshchiv. Their grandchildren are the statesman Serhii Witte and the writer-theosophist Olena Blavatska (Blavatsky's mother, the writer Olena Fadyeyeva-Han, was born in Rzhyshchiv).

On a high cliff above the Dnipro, a part of the manor park "Lypky" with an old linden avenue has been preserved. This place is great for picnics.

Family goat farm with cheese dairy "Dooobra Farm" was founded in 2011 by the family of former advertising artist Taras Lozhenko. It is located in the village of Ivky on the outskirts of Bohuslav. Excursions and tastings are held here.

About 400 goats are kept on the farm, of which 230 are milking. Cheese is cooked three times a week. About 100 kilograms of cheeses are produced in one day. The farm is equipped with a modern technological line.

Today, "Doobra Farm" produces 12 different types of cheese. In particular, 4 types of goat's cheese: soft cream cheese, semi-hard "Yangol", aged "Bikoz" and "Shedevr" with white mold. From cow's milk, the cheeses "Rankovy", "Legend", "Seven Tastes", "Starets", "Kosychka", "Suluhuni" and others are produced. The farm also offers cheese, sweet and salty cottage cheese, butter, cream, kefir, meat products and honey.

The farm hosts the Cheese Museum, which exhibits items related to cheese production, collected by the farm's owners during their travels in Europe. In particular, samples of rare European cheeses, advertising leaflets of Ukrainian cheeses from 1961 in French, records of unique cheese recipes, an engraving of the oldest cheese market in Holland, a collection of cheese knives are presented.

The excursion program includes a tour of the goat farm and tea plantation, a detailed story about the cheese factory, a visit to the Cheese Museum and a cheese tasting.

The Cheese Museum in Kyiv also operates as a branch of the family cheese factory "Dooobra Farm".

The Roman Catholic Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Fastiv was built at the beginning of the 20th century according to the project of the architect Vladyslav Dombrovskyi in the neo-Gothic style at the expense of Countess Branytska.

The main facade is crowned by two different towers, between which the central entrance to the church is located. Above the entrance there is a characteristic round Gothic rose window. The facade features a sculpture of a bishop and a bas-relief composition "Christ Blessing the Children". The interior decoration of the church is quite ascetic, except for the columns with magnificent capitals.

The original asymmetric temple with rich decor is considered a business card of the city.

The building of the Catholic seminary is located nearby. Father Zygmund Kozar, the abbot of the church, thanks to whom the Catholic shrine of Fastiv was revived and restored in the 1990s, is buried on the territory of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Church.

The Feofaniya tract is a picturesque area on the southern outskirts of Kyiv, where the Feofaniya park and the Saint Panteleymon women's monastery are located.

It was mentioned for the first time in 1471 as a tract of Lazarivshchyna, belonging to the Kyiv administrator Khodyk. In 1803, Bishop Feofan of Chyhyryn settled here, and the village was named Feofaniya. At the same time, the first wooden temple in honor of the Miracle of Michael the Archangel and the bishop's house were built. In 1861, a hermitage was founded in Feofaniya, and in 1912, the majestic Panteleymon Cathedral was built here.

The monastery was closed by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, medical institutions of various departments, the main observatory and field experimental laboratory of the Institute of Botany of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine were located here. Only in 1990, the mutilated cathedral building was returned to the Orthodox Church. Three years later, Feofaniya became a hermitage of the Holy Intercession Church Convent, and in 2002 the monastery became independent.

The territory of the tract has the status of a monument of garden and park art, subordinated to the State Reserve Farm "Feofaniya" of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Since 2003, the recreation area near the ponds has been reconstructed with the arrangement of water supply, drainage, gazebos, fountains, the laying of paths, lining of the shores, etc. The reconstruction has not yet been completed, but the park is already popular among the townspeople.

During the creation of the Kaniv Reservoir in 1972, several villages on the outskirts of Rzhyshchiv were flooded. On the site of the former village of Husyntsi, the half-flooded Transfiguration Church with a bell tower has been preserved.

The church was built by the local landowner Husynsky in 1812 (according to other sources in 1822). The church in the Ukrainian Baroque style stood on a hill that turned into an island. In the summer, the church could only be reached by water, and in the winter it was possible to approach it by ice from the opposite bank of the Dnipro from Rzhyshchiv (a difficult approach through the forest).

For a long time, the church remained half-destroyed. In 2009, bank strengthening work began, raising the level of the island and reconstructing the church. A long bridge connects the island with the shore, where the Saint Nicholas Monastery-Hermitage was recently founded. In summer, you can organize a trip to the island to the flooded church by boat from the Rzhyshchiv pier.

The former manor of the "railroad kings" - the fon Mekk family, friends and relatives of Petro Chaykovsky, built in Kopylov by Mykola Karlovych von Meck in 1888.

The building is wooden, on a brick plinth. A 9-hectare park with spruce and linden avenues has been preserved.

Petro Chaykovsky visited fon Mekk several times.

During the Second World War in 1943-1944, the estate housed a military hospital, then a music school.

Currently, the building is in a dilapidated state, in need of conservation and restoration.

"Golden Gates" - one of the few monuments of the fortification of Ancient Kyiv. They were the main, ceremonial gate of the city of Yaroslav.

Mentioned in the chronicle article of 1037, which tells about the construction activities of Prince Yaroslav the Wise. However, recent research proves that the construction of Kyiv fortifications, together with the "Golden Gates", was begun by Volodymyr the Great, and completed by his son Yaroslav the Wise, who erected the Church of the Annunciation on them, consecrated in 1022. The name of the gate comes from the golden dome of the Annunciation Church, which crowned the structure.

In 1832, thorough archaeological excavations were carried out. In 1982, to the 1500th anniversary of Kyiv, the "Golden Gates" were reconstructed. During the reconstruction, the late masonry adjacent to the walls of the first half of the 11th century, and the buttresses of the 19th century were preserved. The modern superstructure does not put pressure on the old walls, it rests on metal structures hidden in its thickness. The ancient foundations can be viewed inside the building.

In 1983, the pavilion-reconstruction "Golden Gates" became a museum. It is part of the National Reserve "Sophia of Kyiv".

Nearby in the park is a monument to Yaroslav the Wise (1997), a cast-iron fountain (19th century). From here begins Yaroslaviv Val Street, laid along one of the defensive ramparts of Ancient Kyiv.

Bohuslav granite outcropping is a geological monument of nature. Rocks 10-12 meters high are located along the bed of the Ros River in the central part of Bohuslav.

In the valley of the river, granite blocks embedded in the ground are spectacularly scattered along its slopes. The age of the Bohuslav granites is 2 billion years. Picturesque rapids are formed in the place where Ros washes the granite island with two branches.

One such place with a deep bath overhanging a high rock is called "The Yama" by the locals.

The Museum of Hetmanship in Kyiv is dedicated to the history of state formation of Ukraine during the Zaporizhzhian Cossack Army and the Hetmanshchyna of the XVII-XVIII centuries, as well as the Hetmanate of the early XX century.

The museum's exposition reveals the essence of the specific hetman form of government and the structure of military-civilian administration in contemporary Ukraine, and tells about the history and traditions of the Cossack-Hetman era.

The Hetmanship Museum was founded in 1993 and is housed in a late 17th-century architectural monument known to Kyivans as "Mazepa's House." Indeed, this two-story mansion in the Baroque style typical of Cossack architecture was built during the reign of Hetman Ivan Mazepa, although there is no direct evidence of his stay here.

From 1717 the house was owned by the Cossack-bourgeois Sychevskyi family, whose representatives were part of the city magistrate. Among the few Podil mansions, this house survived the fire of 1811, as indicated by its location at an angle to later street planning. During the reconstruction of Podil, the architect Andriy Melenskyi completed the second floor and the pediment with columns.

In Soviet times, there were communal apartments. In 1992, the Ivan Mazepa Foundation carried out a restoration to create the Museum of Hetmanship. It is part of the State Historical and Architectural Reserve "Ancient Kyiv".

The museum has more than 9,000 museum items. In the hall of Bohdan Khmelnytsky the banner of the hetman with his family coat of arms is presented. The scientific exhibitions "Hetman Ivan Mazepa", "Pylyp Orlyk - Hetman, the author of the first democratic constitution of Ukraine" and "Pavlo Skoropadskyi and the Ukrainian state of 1918" are constantly open. Among the exhibits: an engraving of 1706 "Mazepa among his good deeds", a map of Ukraine by Johann Baptist Homann in 1716, items from the personal collection of the Skoropadskyi family.

The museum periodically holds meetings of the discussion club "Hetman's Living Room".

RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR

On the night of October 23, 2025, as a result of a Russian air attack, the Hetmanship Museum suffered significant damage - 21 windows were broken in the museum, shrapnel cut the facade of the building, the blast wave deformed the entrance metal door, and some decorative wooden doors on the second floor were broken.

The Holy Intercession Cathedral on Solomyanka in Kyiv is the work of Ipolit Nikolaev.

The church was built on the order of the Kyiv City Council during 1895-1897 in memory of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halytskyi Platon (Horodetskyi). It is also known by the name "Platon's Church" among Kyivans.

In 1905-1919, the future creator and first metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Vasyl Lypkivskyi, was the rector of the church.

Holy Intercession Cathedral belongs to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.