Attractions of Kherson district

The complex of buildings and the remains of defense structures of the Kherson Fortress, which founded the city of Kherson, are located on the territory and in the vicinity of the Kherson Fortress Park.

The fortress at the mouth of the Dnipro was founded by Prince Hrihory Potemkin in 1778, along with the earlier fortification Oleksandr-Shants (1737). The construction was carried out by the troops of the local garrison under the leadership of General Ivan Hannibal.

On the territory of the Kherson Fortress Park on Perekopska Street, the arched Ochakivsky (western) and Moskovsky (northern) gates of the end of the 18th century, a powder cellar (converted into a restaurant), fragments of shafts and ravelins have been preserved.

On the opposite side of Perekopska Street is the Arsenal with a monumental colonnade, built in 1784 - one of the earliest buildings of the Kherson Fortress (now the city prison).

The rugged terrain on the slope of the Dnipro-Buh estuary on the eastern outskirts of the village of Stanislav is called the "Kherson mountains". It is an exposure of rocks of the Quaternary (anthropogenic) system.

A ravine 25 meters deep and 50 meters wide stretches about 600 meters to the seashore. The slopes are almost vertical. The shore of the estuary rises to a height of 55 meters in ledges.

Since 2002, this territory with an area of ​​659 hectares has been included in the "Stanislavsky" Landscape Reserve of national importance.

Kherson Regional Art Museum named after Oleksiy Shovkunenko was opened in 1977 in the former building of the City Duma.

His prototype was the pre-revolutionary Kherson Museum of Fine Arts, whose collection included works of painting, graphics, sculpture, decorative and applied arts, donated by the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, the St. Petersburg Porcelain Factory and the Glass Factory. The reason for the creation of the current museum was the city's receipt of a private collection of paintings by collector Maria Kornilovska. 

Before the large-scale Russian invasion, the museum's collection consisted of works of art from the 17th-21st centuries, and its geography spanned several continents. The basis of the collection was more than 150 works of the outstanding Ukrainian painter Oleksiy Shovkunenko. The exhibition also featured canvases by Vasyl Polenov, Oleksiy Savrasov, Ivan Kramsky, Volodymyr Makovsky, Mykhaylo Vrubel, Mykola Pymonenko, Volodymyr Orlovsky and other artists, icon painting of the 17th-20th centuries.

During the Russian occupation of Kherson in 2022, the invaders looted the Kherson Art Museum. Most of the exhibits were taken to the territory of the occupied Crimea. In particular, the Russians stole paintings of the 18th-19th centuries, belonging to the brushes of Western European, Ukrainian and Russian artists, as well as paintings by Soviet artists.

The Museum of Local Lore in Kherson arose on the basis of a collection of antiquities, which began to be collected in 1890 by archaeologist Viktor Рoshkevych, and the entomological office of botanist and ecologist Yosyp Pachosky. In 1963, the exhibitions were merged into a single museum, which since 1978 is housed in the former building of the Kherson District Court (1893).

The museum has three branches: "Literary Museum", "Nature Museum" and "Kakhovka Historical Museum".

Before the large-scale Russian invasion, the museum's holdings included about 144,000 museum exhibits. The exposition included natural, archeological and historical departments, as well as the Suvorov Hall.

During the Russian occupation of Kherson in 2022, the invaders looted the Kherson Regional Museum of Local Lore. In particular, the occupiers took away collections of coins, weapons, Sarmatian jewelry of the Soviet era and the Russian Empire, antique furniture of the 18th-19th centuries, a collection of icons, paintings, as well as valuable materials from archaeological excavations at the late Scythian settlement of the Chervonyi Mayak.

The facade of the museum was damaged as a result of Russian shelling of Kherson. Now the building is preserved and awaiting restoration.

The Literary Museum opened in Kherson in 1992 as a department of the Kherson Regional Museum of Local Lore. It is located in a historic building from the late 19th century in the city center.

Before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the museum had three permanent exhibitions: "In the Labyrinth of Ancient Streets", "A Meeting Through Time" and "Futuristic Dreams".

The exhibition "In the Labyrinth of OLld Streets" introduces visitors to the most beloved street of Kherson residents - Yevropeyska Street. Vintage postcards, photographs, personal belongings of Kherson residents, schemes and plans of the old city recreate the unique flavor of the center of Kherson.

The exhibition "A Meeting Through Time" recreates the life of an aristocratic residence of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Memorial items, works of art, antique furniture – all this became the basis for recreating the interior of the study and living room of that era.

Visitors to the exhibition "Futuristic Dreams" will see the pioneers of the new artistic movement, Davyd Burlyuk, Oleksiy Kruchonykh, Volodymyr Mayakovskiy, Mykhaylo Semenko and others, whose youth and search for a creative style took place in Kherson. Their first collections and paintings, which shocked the townspeople 100 years ago, are presented to visitors to the Literary Museum.

The building of the Second Mariyinsko-Oleksandrivska Women's Zemska Gymnasium in Kherson was built in 1896 in the style of eclecticism with the use of Moorish architectural traditions.

In Soviet times, the building housed a pedagogical institute.

Currently, it is an educational building of the Faculty of Technologies and Service Areas of Kherson State University.

Nearby is the church of Saint Oleksandra.

The obelisk with a sundial and a bas-relief is erected in honor of the English reformer lawyer, doctor and philanthropist Dzhon Hovard.

In Europe, he built hospitals and homes for the elderly, fought for the rights of convicts. In 1789, an enthusiastic doctor came to Kherson to fight the typhus epidemic that broke out here. Having become infected himself, he died a year later and was buried there.

The "Frigate" memorial sign on the embankment of Kherson is the most famous symbol of the city.

The monument in the form of a sailboat on a high pedestal was erected in 1972 in honor of the first ships of the Black Sea Fleet: the 66-gun battleship "Glory to Kateryna" and the 50-gun frigate "George the Victorious". They were launched from the docks of the Kherson admiralty shipyard in 1783.

The monument is made of sheet copper, concrete and granite. Sculptors Ivan Bilokur, Volodymyr Potrebenko, Vasyl Shkuropad, architect Yuriy Tarasov.

The monument to Prince Hrihory Potemkin-Tavriyskyi was erected at the behest of Empress Catherine II in Kherson - the city that Potemkin built and where he was buried in 1791.

However, the construction of the monument began only under Oleksandr I, Catherine's grandson. The sculpture by Ivan Martos was installed in Potemkin Square in 1836. During the Soviet rule, the monument was removed from the pedestal (a monument to Karl Marx was erected in its place), and then it disappeared.

Restored in 2003 to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the founding of the city.

In 2022, during the occupation of Kherson by Russian troops during the Russian-Ukrainian war, on the eve of the retreat from the city as a result of a successful counteroffensive operation by the Ukrainian army, the Russian occupiers dismantled the monument and took it out of the city.

The building of the Museum of Nature is a historical and architectural monument, erected in Kherson at the beginning of the 20th century at the expense of the Kherson provincial zemstvo and charitable contributions of the townspeople. The museum opened in 1906 and was the only building in Ukraine built specifically for the museum exposition.

The founder and first director of the museum was Yosyp Pachosky - an outstanding scientist, naturalist, who made significant discoveries in natural science. He devoted 26 years of tireless work to the formation of the first unique collection of flora and fauna of Southern Ukraine. The specimens he collected still adorn the museum exposition. Currently, the museum's natural history collection has over 49 thousand storage units.

Pachosky's memorial belongings, which were stored in the museum, allowed us to recreate a fragment of the scientist's study. Here you can see his photographs, manuscripts, and numerous scientific works. In the showcases are entomological boxes, stuffed mammals and birds, alcohol preparations, herbariums made by the scientist's hands.

The exposition "History of the Creation of the Kherson Museum of Nature" presents documents that tell about the activities of the provincial entomological office and the creation of the natural history museum. The showcases house the very first exhibits of the museum.

One of the most interesting expositions of the museum of nature "Kherson Safari" allows you to travel to different corners of the planet's wildlife. Here you can see the inhabitants of dense forests - bears, tigers; animals that live on mountain peaks and steppe expanses - snow leopards and wolves. Most of the exhibits involved in the exhibition represent rare and endangered species and were made by the best taxidermists of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.

The exposition "Inhabitants of the World Ocean" recreates shallow water areas and deep-water areas of the Lower Dnieper, Azov and Black Seas with the help of modern museum equipment. Here you can see birds typical of these places, typical species of commercial fish and bottom landscapes with various invertebrates.

The real highlight of the museum is the central exhibit - the largest museum item - a 26-meter skeleton of a giant fin whale, obtained by Ukrainian whalers off the coast of Antarctica.

The Museum of Nature is a department of the Kherson Regional Museum of Local Lore.

The Oleshky Museum of Local Lore was opened in 1962 in the house of the secretary of the Oleshky city administration, Tsyurupa, where his son Oleksandr was born in 1870, a future Soviet party figure, head of State Planning and People's Commissar of Trade.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the memorial museum named after Tsyurupa was repurposed as a museum of local history.

It is a museum complex of historical, local history and ethnographic directions.

The Oleshky sands are the largest sand massif in Europe, which is sometimes incorrectly called the largest European desert.

The sand arena, about 15 kilometers in diameter (161,000 hectares), consists of barkhans (kuchuguri) about 5 meters high, covered with rare vegetation. The name Oleshky sands comes from the nearby town of Oleshky.

Semi-deserts were formed in the lower reaches of the Dnipro in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of massive uncontrolled livestock grazing, which destroyed the vegetation that bound the sands, and also as a result of almost complete deforestation. All this time, sand consolidation works were carried out. Currently, the spread of the desert has been stopped with the help of large areas of pine forest around the entire perimeter.

In Soviet times, the Oleshky sands were used as a military airfield for bombing. Due to the fact that many unexploded ammunition remained in the sands, formally the access of civilians to the territory was prohibited, but practically there were no obstacles to visiting until recently. In 2010, the Oleshky Sands National Park was created here.

Near the village of Proletarka, there is a convenient viewing platform, the coordinates of which are given below.

Since 2016, the Oleshky sands have again been used as a military training ground, access to the territory is closed.

The original monument in the form of a wooden bell was installed in Oleshky next to the place where the Oleshky Zaporizhzhia Sich existed in 1711-1728.

It was founded at the confluence of the Kinka River with the Lazniuk River by the Zaporizhzhia Cossacks, who moved from under the oppression of the Russian Tsar to the protectorate of the Crimean Khanate. Here the chieftain of Kost Hordiyenko and the son of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk Hryhoriy, whom his father sent to the Zaporizhzhians on a secret mission, discussed plans for the liberation of Ukraine. In 1728, dissatisfied with the oppression of the Tatars, the Zaporizhzhians left Oleshky Sich and returned to Zaporizhzhia.

The age-old oak in Shevchenkivskyi Park is one of the symbols of Kherson. The oldest park in the city was laid out by order of Prince Potomkin Tavriysky in 1785, but in the 19th century the trees were cut down, turning this place into a parade ground, where horse races were held.

In 1869, the park was revived on the initiative of the vice-governor Denys Karnovych. Before the revolution, the park was called Denysovsky in his honor.

The compositional center of the park is a huge petioled oak, according to legend, planted by Emperor Oleksandr II, although the tree was planted by Karnovych. The rays of eight shady alleys diverge from the tree in different directions, one of which leads to the church of Saint Fedir Ushakov.

The house-museum of the self-taught artist Polina Rayko was opened in her native Oleshky in 2004, after her death.

Polina Rayko, a master of naïve art, a poorly educated village woman, began to create at the age of 69 after a series of life tragedies - the loss of her husband and daughter, the imprisonment of her son. In order not to feel alone in an empty house, she began to paint the walls with murals. By the end of her life, she managed to paint all five rooms: the walls, ceilings, doors of the house, as well as the porch and gate of her yard. In her works secular, Christian and pagan symbols are intertwined.

The house-museum of Polina Rayko is cared for by the Polina Rayko Charitable Foundation.

On the night of June 6, 2023, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian troops blew up the dam of the Kakhovka HPP, which caused a catastrophic flooding of the lower Dnipro. As a result, the house-museum of Polina Rayko was completely flooded by the waters of the Dnipro.