Attractions of Prelesne

The estate of the landowner Bantysh in Prelesne is located on the territory of an ancient park with an artificial lake.

The Bantysh family comes from Moldavia and was related to the Moldavian king Cantemir, and Peter I in 1718 gave them land as a thank you for their participation in the Turkish campaign.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Bantysh built a two-story palace in the style of classicism in Prelesne, and in 1858 they laid out a park with an area of 66 hectares, where 120 species of trees and shrubs grew.

During Soviet times, a children's camp was placed on the territory of the manor, which still exists today. The palace is in a dilapidated state.

The Museum of Folk Architecture, Life and Children's Creativity in the village of Prelesne is the only skansen (open-air museum) in Donetsk region. It was founded in 1983 on the initiative of a local teacher, local historian, and artist Oleksandr Shevchenko.

The complex of wooden buildings reproduces a peasant yard of the 19th century in the Slobozhanschyna region: a typical residential house under a reed roof, a windmill with wooden mechanisms, a storeroom and a forge with tools, a well, beehives.

All these exhibits are authentic, collected in the villages of Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. In the whitewashed wooden house, you can see a stove, furniture, ceramic dishes, icons, towels, and embroidery.

The most interesting is the windmill, in which the working mechanism, millstone and various utensils have been preserved. The exhibition hall presents samples of folk art of Slobozhanshchyna and children's art.

There is a restaurant on the territory that offers visitors traditional Ukrainian cuisine.

The Museum of Folk Architecture in Prelesne is a department of the Donetsk Regional Art Museum.