The back story
The city of golden domes: reading Kyiv’s great sights
St Sophia’s and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on UNESCO’s list, the Golden Gate, St Michael’s and St Andrew’s, the Andriivskyi Descent down to Podil, and the memorial at Babyn Yar: how to read Kyiv.
Kyiv stands on the high right bank of the Dnipro, and its great sights follow the line of the hills. On the upper plateau are the oldest: St Sophia’s Cathedral and, a few kilometres south, the monasteries and caves of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, inscribed together on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1990 and placed on its List of World Heritage in Danger in 2023. Between them run the old town’s streets, from the Golden Gate to St Michael’s; from St Andrew’s Church a cobbled street drops to Podil, the merchants’ town by the river.
The UNESCO city
St Sophia’s Cathedral, in UNESCO’s description, was designed to rival Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; it is the heart of the National Preserve “Sophia of Kyiv”. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the cave monastery on the hills above the river, is in its preserve’s words the largest museum complex in Ukraine, with 144 monuments of history and culture, among them two underground complexes; the preserve is open daily from 10am to 6pm.
The old town
Volodymyrska Street runs from the Golden Gate past St Sophia’s to the square in front of St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery. From there the funicular, opened in 1905, runs down the hill to Poshtova Square.
Down to Podil
St Andrew’s Church, designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli in the eighteenth century, stands at the top of the Andriivskyi Descent, the cobbled street that winds down to Kontraktova Square and Podil.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © Rbrechko · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia CommonsMemory
At Babyn Yar, on 29 and 30 September 1941, the occupying German forces murdered tens of thousands of Kyiv’s Jews; it is now the National Historical Memorial Preserve “Babyn Yar”. The National Museum of the Holodomor, above the river at Pechersk, commemorates the victims of the famine of 1932–33.
Museums close and visitors are asked to go to the nearest shelter during an air alert: plan the great sights for the morning and keep the afternoon loose.
Our advice: give the Lavra a whole morning, and wear modest dress: shoulders and knees covered, and a headscarf for women in the churches.
Why it's on our list
- The UNESCO city
- The old town
- Down to Podil
- Memory
Location
The map comes from Google Maps, which sets its own cookies once it loads.
More in depth
The back storyKyiv’s arts: the Opera, the Arsenal and the theatres that never closedThe National Opera, the Franko, the Lesya Ukrainka and the Molodyi theatres, the Mystetskyi Arsenal, the Khanenko Museum, the Dovzhenko Centre and the contemporary galleries: Kyiv’s arts today.
The back storyBuying in Kyiv: what a foreign buyer should know firstApartments and houses yes, farmland no; a notary for every deal, a Ukrainian tax number, the state register, and the questions wartime adds: buying a home in Kyiv, in outline.
The back storyGetting to and around Kyiv: the train from Poland, the metro and the appsNo flights: the night train from Przemyśl or Warsaw, Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi station, the deep metro that doubles as a shelter, the funicular and the ride-hailing apps.