Attractions of Kharkiv region

The monument to Ostap Bender, Ipolyt Matviyovych Vorobyaninov and Ellochka the cannibal - cult characters of the novel "12 Chairs" by Ilya Ilf and Yevhen Petrov - was opened in Kharkiv in 2005 on City Day.

The "Great Combiner", cast in bronze, sat on a bench installed in front of the entrance to one of Kharkiv's cafes. Kisa Vorobyaninov, who was looking for treasures hidden in a furniture set together with the "great combiner", is depicted as begging for alms. Ellochka in a defiant pose seems to invite passers-by to sit on the treasured chair.

In 2024, monuments to the characters of the novel "12 Chairs" in Kharkiv were dismantled as part of decolonization.

A sculpture depicting a student programmer is located in the city of Kharkiv near the central entrance to the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics.

Established in 2010 in honor of the 80th anniversary of the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics. The author of the project is Roman Blazhko, the designer is Viktor Honcharenko.

The monument to the student programmer was made of bronze with charitable funds.

The Museum of Local Lore named after Trokhym Sulima is located in the center of the village of Pechenihy in the historical building of the former Novo-Belhorod convict Central Prison for political prisoners.

The Novo-Belhorod convict Central Prison was built in Pechenihy (at that time - Novo-Belhorod) in 1854 and was part of the complex of buildings of the military settlement. At different times, well-known populists served their terms here: Oleksandr Dolhushyn, Ipolyt Myshkin, Yakiv Rybitsky, revolutionary worker Petro Aleksyeyev and others. The Ukrainian poet-revolutionary Pavlo Hrabovskyi was also imprisoned here. A cell with bunk beds and black-painted windows has been preserved.

The Pechenihy Museum of Local Lore was opened on March 26, 2002. The basis of the museum collection was the items from the former Public Historical Museum of the village of Pechenihy. The museum's funds include more than 3,300 objects, which are exhibited in 12 exhibition halls.

Of special value are the archaeological finds from the excavations of burial mounds of the catacomb culture of the III millennium BC and Neolithic settlements of the V-IV millennia BC.

The National Literary and Memorial Museum of Hryhoriy Skovoroda is located in the former estate of the Kovalevsky landowners, where the great Ukrainian philosopher died in 1794 (according to other sources, in the building of the former church-parish school).

The house has a memorial room - a "quiet cell", where Skovoroda loved to work and in which he ended his life.

In a cozy, well-planned park, maintained in perfect condition, preserved memorable places associated with the great thinker. This is the skeleton of a huge 700-year-old oak on the shore of a pond with a memorial sign (1972, sculptors Lyubov Zhukovska, Dmytro Sova), under the cover of which wrote a philosopher, a well and a huge wooden landlord's barn, on a wide lawn in front of which events organized by the museum are held.

Not far from the manor house in the park is the grave of Hryhoriy Skovoroda. On the stylized tombstone under the roadside stone (1972, sculptors Lyubov Zhukovska, Dmytro Sova) carved a laconic and surprisingly capacious, worthy of a great philosopher author's epitaph: "The world caught me, but did not catch." A modest monument to Hryhoriy Skovoroda was erected at the entrance to the square (1972, sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze, architect Vasyl Hnyezdilov).

During the large-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the building of National Literary and Memorial Museum of Hryhoriy Skovoroda was destroyed by a direct hit from a Russian missile. Part of the exposition was destroyed, but the most valuable exhibits were not damaged.

The Homilsha Forests are a reserve massif of deciduous forest on the banks of the Siverskyi Donets River 40 kilometers south of Kharkiv, between the villages of Velyka Homilsha and Koropove.

The national nature park "Homilsha Forests" was created in 2004, but as early as the 18th century, Peter I drew attention to the natural value of local landscapes, issuing a decree on the allocation of protected ship groves near Homilsha. In the 1970s, the "Homilsha Forest Dacha" reserve was created, recreation centers began to appear around it.

The list of rare plants in the forest is 132 species. One of the areas is called a "branch of the taiga" because very tall silver fir trees grow here. About 500 hectares of 130-150-year-old oak forest have been preserved to this day, and there are some 300-year-old oaks.

Rare birds are found here, including the white-tailed eagle, the burying eagle, the blue kingfisher, the bee-eater, the white-tailed eagle, the vulture, and others. Waterfowl liked the picturesque Kosach Bay.

Archaeological monuments of the Stone and Bronze Age, hillforts and burial grounds of Scythian, Alanic and Slavic antiquity have been preserved.

National Nature Park "Slobozhanskyi" was created in 2009 with the aim of preserving historical and cultural complexes and valuable natural territories of the forest-steppe zone of the Slobozhanshchyna region.

It is located on an area of ​​5,244 hectares in the territory of the Bohodukhiv district of the Kharkiv region in the valley of the Merla River (Dnipro River basin). Forest coenoses of natural origin are represented by oaks, pines, and in the depressions around the swamps - birches and alders.

The business card of Slobozhanskyi National Nature Park is relict lakes, small swamps and peat bogs - peculiar micro-reserves of boreal vegetation that have survived here since the last ice age.

The visitor center of the National Nature Park "Slobozhanskyi" is located on the territory of the Natalivka manor in the village of Volodymyrivka.

The wooden church of the Nativity of Christ was built in the village of Borova in 1782 at the expense of the parishioners. This is one of the oldest wooden churches of the Kharkiv region, a wonderful example of the wooden church architecture of the Slobozhanshchyna.

The church is one-story, three-log, made of oak logs, decorated with elegant decorative wood carvings.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Church of the Nativity of Christ was reconstructed.

The first wooden Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin in Derhachi was built in 1685.

He stood on a sandy plain called Buryakivka. The builder of the church was Yakiv Turanskyi.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a new brick church was built, which was consecrated in 1838. The church has four thrones. The main throne in honor of the Nativity of the Most Holy Virgin.

On April 4, 2022, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin was damaged by Russian artillery fire. Shelling by the Russian occupiers damaged the facade and windows of the church, destroyed the Sunday school and the church shop.

The Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin in Cherkaski Tyshky was built in 1830 at the expense of the centurion Andriy Tykhotskyi and other parishioners.

However, the official annals of the church have been kept since 1772, when the wooden church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Tyshky is first mentioned.

The project of the new stone church was developed by the well-known at that time architect Yevhen Vasylyev, the author of the projects of many churches in Slobozhanshchyna. The iconostasis was created by the artist Illya Repin in the 1960s, while he was still a student at the Academy of Arts. In 1906, the church was significantly expanded at the expense of the descendants of the landowner Tykhotskyi.

During the Soviet era, the church was closed, the icons of Repin's work disappeared during the German occupation, but a few remained in the Kharkiv Art Museum. During the Second World War, the church was reopened, but until recently it remained in a dilapidated state.

Restoration is currently underway.

The Nova Vodolaha Museum of Local Lore is located in the center of the village of Nova Vodolaha.

In the ethnographic exposition, many household items of Slobozhanshchyna, brought from ethnographic expeditions, are collected.

The museum of the Izium city occupation by the Russian invaders was founded in 2022 by the publisher of the newspaper "Obriiy Iziumshchyny" Kostyantyn Hryhorenko with the participation of the Izium Museum of Local Lore. So far, the museum does not have its own premises.

Today, the museum's collection includes more than 200 exhibits. Among them are Russian propaganda posters and proclamations, street signs and announcements, pro-Russian newspapers, enemy flags, uniforms of the occupation forces, chevrons, personal items, dry rations. Presented soldier's canned food, sugar, matches - all with Russian markings.

You can also see the textbooks of educators who sided with the occupiers and were preparing to teach Izium schoolchildren according to the Russian curriculum.

The Oleksiyivska Fortress of the Ukrainian Defense Line was built in 1831, during the second stage of the construction of the line of fortifications on the then southern borders of the Russian Empire.

The original name was Beretska, in 1738 it was renamed to the fortress of Saint Oleksiy. Earthen, almost square in plan, four bastions. The height of the shafts is more than 5 meters. The area of ​​the serf yard is more than 1.5 hectares. A dirt road with a length of about 100 meters is brought up by an embankment to the north-western curtain, in which the entrance is located. The eastern curtain is strengthened by a ravelin directed towards the Bereka River. The length of the fortress on the outer side of the base of the shaft is more than 1030 meters.

The Aleksiivskaya fortress was connected by a rampart with a dry moat to the fourth on the line of Mykhaylivska and the sixth - Yefremivska fortresses. The garrison consisted of one infantry regiment of land militiamen, later transferred to dragoons and reinforced by a half-company of grenadiers.

The monument is well preserved and gives a clear idea of ​​the shape and size of the earthen fortification of the first third of the 18th century.

Recreation complex "Osynove Pleso" is located on the picturesque shore of Siverskyi Donets on the eastern outskirts of Chuhuiv.

Made in an ethnic style: a Ukrainian mud house with a reed roof, a village yard fenced with mud, a wooden carved well in the yard. On the territory, you can visit an authentic Ukrainian house-museum, which recreates the lifestyle of the Ukrainian peasantry of the 18th-19th centuries. A unique collection of household items and decorative and applied art, collected by the founder of the complex, Pavlo Zektser, is on display.

A three-level bathhouse, fishing, and picnic areas are at your disposal. During the Repin plein airs, the complex hosts artists, and their paintings are exhibited here.

The Paper Museum was established at the Zmiiv Paper Mill in 2018 in a building that is over 125 years old.

The museum's exposition tells the history of the development of the paper industry from ancient times to the present, demonstrates production processes and eco-technologies used in the modern world and in particular at the Zmiiv factory. Among the exhibits are printing and publishing machines and equipment, samples of paper and products made from it. Some exhibits are over 200 years old. The main museum exhibits are unique machines that were used to make paper at the beginning of the 20th century.

For museum visitors, real and virtual tours of the museum premises, laboratories where eco-paper is made, and production workshops are held.

The Parkhomivka Art Museum named after Panas Lunov is a unique art gallery, nicknamed the "rural Hermitage".

The gallery was created in 1955 by village teacher Panas Lunov as a branch of the school museum. The exhibition was based on paintings bought by Lunov at a post-war Kharkiv flea market, as well as donated by Kharkiv artists. Later, the collection was replenished with canvases donated to the village gallery by many museums of the USSR.

At the request of Lunov, the unique exposition was placed in the former palace of Count Pidhorichani, which previously housed the office of the sugar factory.

Today, the Parkhomivka Art Museum collection includes about 6,000 exhibits: paintings by Rembrandt, Gauguin, Van Dyck, Benoit, Manet, Bryullov, Shishkin, Aivazovsky, Levitan, Repin, Vasnetsov, Roerich, Malevich, drawings by Shevchenko, posters by Mayakovsky and others.

The pearl of the collection are four works by Pablo Picasso, donated to the museum by Illya Erenburh, including the famous painting "Dove of the World", which became a symbol of the anti-war movement.