Kharkiv History Museum

Kharkiv

　　The city's history museum found itself encased in a giant glassy structure as the result of an unfinished reconstruction, which hasn't touched upon the building itself. But the changing wind of history can be felt in the musty halls, where exhibitions have been updated to reflect the Maidan revolution and...

Ploshcha Svobody

Kharkiv

　　Locals claim that this enormous expanse of cobbles is the second largest in the world after Beijing's Tiananmen Sq. At 750m long it's indisputably huge and is certainly Kharkiv's most unique sight. Planned as an ensemble of Ukrainian government buildings when Kharkiv was the republican capital, it was laid out...

Kharkiv Art Museum

Kharkiv

　　Kharkiv's most famous museum owns one of many versions of Ilya Repin's Zaporizhsky Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan, which is found in a room full of Repin paintings in the museum's permanent collection. The entire collection of romantic paintings here is of a high standard for Ukraine,...

Palanok Castle

Odesa

　　Built atop a 68m-tall volcano, Mukacheve's highlight is this dramatic castle that pops up from the surrounding plain west of town, like something in a fairy-tale fantasy. This 14th-century fortress, famous as the site where Croatian-Hungarian princess Ilona Zrini held off the Austrian Emperor's army for three years before finally...

Chernivtsi University

Odesa

　　University buildings are often called 'dreaming spires', but Chernivtsi's is more like an acid trip. This fantastic, Unesco-listed red-brick ensemble, with coloured tiles decorating its pseudo-Byzantine, pseudo-Moorish and pseudo-Hanseatic wings, is the last thing you'd expect here. The architect responsible was Czech Josef Hlavka, who was also behind Chernivtsi's Former...

Wehrwolf

Odesa

　　Between May 1942 and July 1943, Adolf Hitler paid several visits (accounts vary) to his regional military headquarters in a vast bunker 8km north Vinnytsya. Code-named Wehrwolf, it was a top-secret facility under the protection of the Fuhrer's personal escort battalion. The Germans blew the whole place up on their...

Prymorsky Boulevard

Odesa

　　Odesa's elegant facade, this tree-lined, clifftop promenade was designed to enchant the passengers of arriving boats with the neoclassical opulence of its architecture and civility, unexpected in these parts at the time of construction in the early 19th century. Imperial architects also transformed the cliff face into terraced gardens descending...

Kamyanets-Podilsky Fortress

Odesa

　　Built of wood in the 10th to 13th centuries, then redesigned and rebuilt in stone by Italian military engineers in the 16th century, K-P's fortress is a mishmash of styles. But the overall impression is breathtaking and the view from the Turkish Bridge leading to the fortress would certainly make...

Apteka Museum

Lviv

　　This fascinating pharmacy museum is located inside a still-functioning chemist's shop dating from 1735. Buy a ticket from the pharmacist and head down into the pidval (cellar) via rooms filled with still medicinally aromatic amphorae, pestles, scales, pill-processing machines and old medicines from pre-WWII Lviv. The damp and musty cellars...

Ratusha

Lviv

　　The city fathers have occupied this location since the 14th century, but the present-day Italianate look dates to 1835. In a sign of openness and transparency, visitors are allowed to roam the corridors of power, but most of them do so on the arduous climb (305 steps from the 4th-floor...

Lviv History Museum – Rynok 24

Lviv

　　This branch of the Lviv History Museum expounds on the city's very early days starting with early cultures that inhabited Galicia and ending with the arrival of printing in the city in the 16th century. 　　Highlights include 2nd-century glass from the Carpathian Kurhan culture (proof the region had contact with...

High Castle Hill

Lviv

　　Around a 2km walk from pl Rynok, visiting the High Castle (Vysoky Zamok) on Castle Hill (Zamkova Hora) is a quintessential Lviv experience. There’s little evidence of the 14th-century ruined stone fort that was Lviv’s birthplace, but the summit mound sporting a mammoth Ukrainian flag thwacking in the wind offers...

Lvivarnya

Lviv

　　Revamped in 2017, the museum belonging to Lviv's brewery is an impressive, modern experience, a world away for the rickety post-Soviet repositories of the past found in many Ukrainian cities. The well-presented exhibits whet the appetite for the tasting session at the end, which takes place in an impressively renovated...

Ploshcha Rynok

Lviv

　　Lviv was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1998, and this old market square lies at its heart. The square was progressively rebuilt after a major fire in the early 16th century destroyed the original. Around 40 townhouses hem the square's perimeter. Most of these three- and four-storey buildings...

National Museum and Memorial to the Victims of Occupation

Lviv

　　This infamous building on vul Bryullova was used as a prison by the Poles, Nazis and communists in turn, but the small and very moving exhibition over two floors focuses on Stalinist atrocities in the early years of WWII. Used as a prison right up to 1996, the brutally bare...

Lychakivsky Cemetery

Lviv

　　Don't leave town until you've seen this amazing 42-hectare cemetery, only a short ride on tram 7 from the centre. This is the Père Lachaise of Eastern Europe, with the same sort of overgrown grounds and Gothic aura as the famous Parisian necropolis (but containing less-well-known people). Laid out in...

Mezhyhirya

Kyiv

　　Kyiv's newest tourist attraction is Mezhyhirya, the estate that once 'belonged' to ex-president and wannabe Ukrainian dictator, Viktor Yanukovych, famously ousted in the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. A wander through the opulent grounds – totalling 137 hectares and costing hundreds of millions of dollars to create – gives visitors an...

Rodina Mat

Kyiv

　　As you journey into Kyiv from the airport, at some point this giant statue of a female warrior will loom up on the horizon and make you wonder, 'What the hell is that?' Well, it's Rodina Mat – literally 'Nation's Mother'. Inaugurated by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1981, it...

PinchukArtCentre

Kyiv

　　The rotating exhibits at this world-class gallery feature elite names in the world of European contemporary art and design, all financed by billionaire mogul Viktor Pinchuk. Works by world giants like Antony Gormley, Damian Hirst and Ai Weiwei have exhibited here. Don't miss the view of Kyiv's roofs from the...

Skvorechnik

Kyiv

　　It's hard to characterise this beachfront hippie haven on Trukhaniv Island. It derives its name from the smattering of raised wooden chill-out huts that dot the grounds. While you can rent these out, Skvorechnik is about much more than birdhouses. It's like a mini Burning Man festival – an alcohol-free...

St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery

Kyiv

　　Looking from St Sophia's past the Bohdan Khmelnytsky statue, it's impossible to ignore the gold-domed blue church at the other end of proyizd Volodymyrsky. This is St Michael's, named after Kyiv's patron saint. As the impossibly shiny cupolas imply, this is a fresh (2001) copy of the original (1108), which...

Maidan Nezalezhnosti

Kyiv

　　Be it celebration or revolution, whenever Ukrainians want to get together – and they often do – 'Maidan' is the nation's meeting point. The square saw pro-independence protests in the 1990s and the Orange Revolution in 2004. But all of that was eclipsed by the Euromaidan Revolution in 2013–14, when...

Kyevo-Pecherska Lavra

Kyiv

　　Tourists and Orthodox pilgrims alike flock to the Lavra, set on 28 hectares of grassy hills above the Dnipro River in Pechersk. It's easy to see why tourists come: the monastery's cluster of gold-domed churches is a feast for the eyes, the hoard of Scythian gold rivals that of the...

St Sophia's Cathedral

Kyiv

　　The interior is the most astounding aspect of Kyiv's oldest standing church. Many of the mosaics and frescoes are original, dating back to 1017–31, when the cathedral was built to celebrate Prince Yaroslav's victory in protecting Kyiv from the Pechenegs (tribal raiders). While equally attractive, the building's gold domes and...