Attractions of Kyiv region

Since 1977, the Baryshivka Local Lore Museum has been operating in the former residential building of the landowner Hladysh, built in the 19th century. Later, a school was located here, where from 1920 to 1923, one of the most prominent neoclassical poets, Mykola Zerov, worked as a teacher.

The collection of the Baryshivka Local Lore Museum includes more than 4,000 exhibits, including tools of the Stone and Bronze Ages, ceramic fragments of the Trypillia culture, and other archaeological finds. A collection of women's clothing and embroidered towels of the 18th-20th centuries is presented.

A separate exhibition highlights the participation of the residents of Baryshivka in the events of the Second World War, the war in Afghanistan and the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Products of local folk craftsmen are exhibited: painting, embroidery, wickerwork, etc.

The Bell Well in Novi Petrivtsi is an ancient spring in the Mezhyhirya tract, the only surviving object of the Kyiv-Mezhyhirya Savior-Transfiguration Monastery.

According to legend, the monks set up a whole system of bells above the spring, which rang melodiously, hence the name (according to another version, church bells were cast here).

The founding of the monastery is attributed to Prince Volodymyr the Great or Prince Andriy Boholyubsky, although Mezhyhirya is first mentioned in the documents of the XV century as a Cossack monastery. Hetmans Petro Sahaidachnyi and Bohdan Khmelnytskyi looked after him. A military hospital and a shelter for veterans were maintained at the expense of the Cossacks. In 1843. Taras Shevchenko visited here, describing Mezhyhirya in the poem "Chernets" (the Shevchenko oak has been preserved - 4.4 meters in girth).

In 1935, the monastery was blown up, in its place was created a closed country village of the party elite (the so-called "Scherbytsky's dacha", later - the residence of Viktor Yanukovych "Mezhyhirya"). It was possible to preserve only the spring, which is famous for the taste and healing properties of iron-rich water. In 2005, a small chapel was built, then a bathhouse, and in 2011, the wooden church of the Transfiguration of the Lord Mezhyhirya was consecrated (services are held on weekends and holidays at 12:00).

The Berezan Museum of Local Lore is located in an original building with elements of folk architecture in the center of the town of Berezan in the Kyiv region. It was founded in 1975 on the initiative of local historian Halyna Ryh.

Today, the exposition of the Berezan Museum of Local Lore has nine sections: nature, traditional life, Cossacks, history of the Second World War, numismatics, folk art, etc.

The exhibition "Shevchenko's Room" is dedicated to Taras Shevchenko's stay in the city, in particular, a facsimile edition of his work "The Plundered Grave" is presented , written in 1843 in Berezan.

In the hall of the 1930s, you can learn about the tragic events of collectivization and the Holodomor in the Berezan region.

A bust of Taras Shevchenko is installed in front of the museum building.

The Bessarabian covered market, which Kyivans call simply "Bessarabka", is the central and most expensive market in Kyiv.

It owes its name to merchants from Bessarabia (a region on the border of the present Odesa region and Moldova). According to another version, this area was called Bessarabka even before the appearance of the bazaar (allegedly, "Bessarab" was called street children in Kyiv).

The idea of tidying up the unattractive Bessarabian market by building the first covered market in Kyiv arose as early as 1873, but the construction began only in 1910 with the funds allocated by the will of the sugar factory, philanthropist and philanthropist Lev Brodsky. The project was developed by the architect Henryk Gai, who had experience designing an indoor market in Warsaw. The walls were built of brick, and the floor with a glazed roof rested on a metal vault frame. The facade of the market is decorated with sculptural compositions "Peasant with oxen", "Milkhouse", as well as heads of bulls, fish and fishing nets, flying geese. The first underground refrigeration unit in the city was installed in the basement.

The Bessarabian market embodied new European trends, which emphasized not the decorative decoration of buildings, but economy and functionality. It still serves its purpose properly.

Bila Tserkva Museum of Local Lore presents a large collection of objects of material and spiritual culture of the Southern Kyiv region.

The museum was founded in 1924 by local historian Stepan Drozdov-Myshkivskyш on the basis of his own collection of antiquities. The museum is now housed in an original constructivist building erected in 1983 on Castle Hill opposite the Church of Saint John the Baptist, near the foundations of the ancient Church of Saint George in the time of Prince Yaroslav the Wise.

The exposition consists of nine chapters that tell about the nature of Southern Kyiv, the ancient history of the region, the events of the Polish-Lithuanian era and the Cossacks, the heyday of the city in the XVIII-XIX centuries, the development of industry and education, the Soviet era and modernity.

Among the most valuable exhibits of the museum: the Scythian sword akinak, a unique Chernyakhiv lamp with the image of a human face, ancient Rus women's jewelry. Valuable relics of the Cossack times are the flag of the Cossack Hundred of the Bila Tserkva Regiment, a mace, a bunchuk, timpani and weapons. The basis of the collection of numismatics are Roman coins, Kyiv hryvnias, money of the Cossack era. The art department presents icons, paintings and sculptures of the XVII-XX centuries from the Branytsky collection. Visitors are especially interested in the recreated interiors of housing of different segments of the population at that time.

A modern reconstruction of the Church of Saint George, which gave the city its current name, was built on the Castle Hill of ancient Saint George near the Bila Tserkva Museum of Local Lore. A monument to the city's founder, Prince Yaroslav the Wise, has been erected on the observation deck above the Ros River.

 Earthen ramparts and a defensive moat have been preserved at the home of the historical Hillfort  Bilhorod on the bank of the river. Irpin in present-day Bilohorodka.

The city of Bilhorod was founded in 990 by the Kyiv prince Volodymyr the Great as a princely residence and became one of the key strongholds of ancient Kyiv's defense against Pecheneg and Polovtsy raids.

According to the legend, during one of the long Pecheneg sieges, the people of Bilhorod dug two wells, lowered a barrel of jelly into one of them, and a barrel of honey into the other, and invited the Pechenegs to negotiations. Seeing that the land itself feeds the besieged, and they can hold out for a long time, the Pechenegs decided to lift the siege.

In 991, the first church in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord was built in Bilhorod, and soon an episcopal chair was founded in Bilhorod. Later, the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles was built, the remains of which were discovered by archaeologists.

In 1240, Batya's hordes destroyed Bilhorod.

Currently, the ramparts of the fortress can be seen both at the entrance to Bilohorodka from the Kyiv side and at the exit in front of the bridge over Irpin.

100 meters from the monument at the foot of the shaft next to the bridge, you can see a spring, which is associated with the legend of the wells.

The estate with a park in Kmitiv Yar on Tatarka in Kyiv served for some time as the residence of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Mykyta Khrushchev, and since then it has been called "Khrushchev's dacha".

The construction of the first manor house, according to the project of the architect Mykola Kazansky, for the apothecary assistant Octavian Bilsky, began here in 1893. This house has remained unchanged.

After the revolution and nationalization, the manor was set up as a government residence. In 1934-1937, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Vsevolod Balytskyi, one of the organizers of the Holodomor in Ukraine, lived here. It was the heyday of the park - a complex of park bridges, gazebos, park sculptures, and artificial lakes were built.

After the liberation of Kyiv in 1943, Mykyta Khrushchev settled here. With him, the park continued to sparkle with its luxury - bears lived in a small castle above the precipice, peacocks walked around the park.

After Khrushchev's departure to Moscow, the estate remained the residence of the first secretaries of the party's central committee. In 1978, the Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology moved to the building near the park, and its administration was located in the country houses.

Today, the park has preserved only the remnants of its former luxury and is in a rather neglected state. Entrance through the passage from Platon Mayboroda Street. Free entrance.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky Square is the main one in Pereyaslav. The administration building and the central hotel are located here.

A monument to Ukrainian-Russian friendship was erected in the Central City Park adjacent to the square in honor of the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia (1954). In 2022, during Russia's large-scale military invasion of Ukraine, this monument was dismantled by the decision of the hromada and the local self-government body.

Khmelnytsky Square is closed to traffic.

The Boiarka Local Lore Museum was opened in 1974 as the Mykola Ostrovsky Literary Memorial Museum in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet writer-propagandist. Its collection includes more than 15,000 objects that constitute the historical and cultural heritage of the region..

The museum is located in a separate building on the territory of the local school, in the building of which Ostrovsky lived in 1921 among the Komsomol brigade of boyar narrow gauge construction workers.

Although in 1992 the museum was repurposed as a museum of local history, the basis of its exposition is still made up of things related to Ostrovsky's work: documents, photographs, personal belongings, first editions of his book "How Steel Was Tempered", etc.

A significant place in the exposition is occupied by the works of artists Poliakova and Hryhoryev. The museum holds more than a thousand original works by these artists.

The monument to defenders of the borders of the Motherland of all generations is one of the most original equestrian monuments in Kyiv.

It decorates the square in front of the building of the State Border Service of Ukraine and was installed in 2004 at the initiative of its management.

The bronze figure of a Cossack with a bare saber, who has risen on the stirrups of a horse and looks into the distance in search of enemies, is installed on a narrow pedestal.

The monument immediately earned the sharp criticism of art critics, and invariably causes smiles and laughter from passers-by. The highly simplified figure of the rider looks disproportionate due to the horse's short stature. A slender horse, standing in an unnatural position with an elongated neck, pointed ears and raised tail, looks more like a thin-legged dog. Since the sculptor did not depict the stirrups, one gets the impression that the Cossack is hanging above the horse in the air.

The Borodianka Local Lore Museum was opened in 2016 in two rooms on the second floor of the Borodianka Palace of Culture named after Taras Shevchenko. Social activist Tamara Uhnivenko and her daughter, artist Olha Uhnivenko, initiated the creation of the museum.

The exposition includes about 3,000 exhibits, including 12 sets and 8 items of ancient clothing, more than 20 ancient embroidered towels, more than 15 items made of homespun cloth, and about 40 household items. Visitors have the opportunity to trace the history of the development of crafts of the region, seeing ancient things, products, clothes. Some exhibits date back to the 12th-18th centuries.

The highlight of the exhibition is the "Wedding" diorama with 39 dolls by Olha Uhnivenko, which in 2020 will be included in the "Ukrainian book of records" as the largest collection of handmade dolls in a thematic diorama.

The museum was damaged by a Russian airstrike in March 2022, but most of the exhibits were saved.

Boryspil State Historical Museum was founded in 1967 on the initiative of local historian Viktor Yova.

Now the museum's collection includes more than 13 thousand exhibits, all collected in a stylized building on the ancient architecture of the Kyivskyi Shlyakh Street, built specifically for the museum in the 1980s.

The exposition tells, in particular, about famous Boryspil residents: Cossack families of Sulymas and Bezborodkos, poet Ivan Nekrashevych, ethnographer Pavlo Chubynskyi.

The exposition also presents materials of Trypillia culture, a diorama "Construction of the Let Synagogue", a fragment of a Polovtsian stone woman, a large number of weapons, tools, jewelry and household utensils, the interior of a peasant house.

Separate expositions tell about Boryspil during the period of Tatar captivity and Polish rule, about the economic development of the city, about the historical events of the liberation struggle of 1917-1921, the Second World War, the Holodomor, the post-war revival, the present.

Botanical garden named after academician Oleksandr Fomin at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University is located behind the Main (Red) building of the university.

The main inhabitants of the garden are introduced plants (moved outside the natural range), which were primarily intended for study by university students. The first plantings in the garden were carried out in 1839 with plants transplanted from the Kremenets botanical garden. The formation of the garden's main collection ended in 1850.

Currently, the garden occupies an area of 22.5 hectares. The territory is divided into zones, which mostly correspond to the origin of the plants. In the middle is a pool surrounded by exotic plants. In the spring, the most beautiful magnolias bloom here, the collection of which, numbering 65 species, is the largest in Ukraine and is considered one of the main dominants of the garden.

One of the most valuable in the collection is the southern Lewiston palm, which gives a unique flavor to the exposition of the subtropical flora of Australia. Its age is more than 200 years, its height is almost 28 m. The central place in the exposition is occupied by a unique specimen of the Encephalartos horridus, which is one of the oldest in the country, its age is more than 200 years.

Access to the open part of the botanical garden is possible free of charge through the central entrance near the "University" metro station. Group tours with greenhouses must be booked in advance. You can also visit the Museum of the History of the Botanical Garden named after academician Oleksandr Fomin, which opened in 2009 in a separate room.

The Branitsky Winter Palace served as the city residence of the count family in Bila Tserkva, while in the summer the Branitskys lived in a country palace on the territory of Oleksandriya Park.

The two-story building in the style of classicism was built at the end of the 18th century on the bank of the Ros River to the west of Castles Hill. The main facade is decorated with a four-column portico of the Ionic order.

Now the building of the former Winter Palace houses the Art School named after Yuriy Pavlenko. Almost no interiors have been preserved.

The hospital building in Stavyshche was built in 1911 at the expense of the Branytsky magnates.

It still serves its purpose.

Today it is the most remarkable architectural monument of the village.