The Zhytomyr Oblast was established in 1937. The gently rolling Polissian Lowland covered with pine and birch forests with scattered swamps forms the province’s northern part. The Slovechno-Ovruch Ridge rising over the lowland in the north livens up the otherwise dull vistas.
The south of the region lies within the Dnipro Upland where the ancient crystalline outcrops of the Ukrainian Shield emerge on the surface. The valleys of the rivers Sluch, Teteriv, and Uzh, cutting their way through the ancient granites and gneisses, shape the landscapes of unbelievable beauty.
The earliest settlements in Zhytomyrschyna appeared in the Middle Stone Age period (ca over 50,000 years ago). The 7th—8th c.c. AD saw the arrival of the Slavonic tribe of Derevlianians. In 1240, these lands were conquered by the Mongol Hordes of Batu Khan and were held under tribute until, in 1362, the nomads were driven away by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The establishment of Rzeczpospolita in 1569 sealed by the Union of Lublin ushered in a new era of a foreign domination over the region, mostly by the Polish magnates. During the 1648—54 War of Liberation the rebels took control over the entire territory of the province which became the part of the Hetmanate. The 1654—67 Russo-Polish War brought back Rzeczpospolita rule over the Right-bank Ukraine for more than a century. In 1793, in the Second Partition of Poland, the Right-bank Ukraine was finally annexed by the Russian Empire and Zhytomyrschyna became a part of Volynia Gu-berniya up to the 1920s.
The oldest architectural survivors in Zhytomyrschyna date from the Princely era. The region’s pride is Christian churches (both Orthodox and Roman Catholic) of the 16th —17th c.c. as well as palaces, country estates, park gazeboes, and monuments of the 18—20th cc.
Built on the rocky left bank of the Teteriv River, Zhytomyr was established as Volynia administrative centre in 1804. The first written records of the city date from 1305. The city’s largest building of the 16—17th c.c., around which the city developed, was a hilltop wooden fortress at the Kamyanka estuary. The oldest extant building in Zhytomyr is the 1724 Jesuit Monastery Brethren House, whereas the most outstanding churches are the 1751 St. Sophia Roman Catholic Cathedral and the 1874 Transfiguration Orthodox Cathedral. Among other architectural landmarks are the 18”’-c. Town Hall, the Post-Station, and the 19th -c. Bishop’s Palace. The oldest of Zhytomyr’s monuments is that to Alexander Pushkin, which rose in 1899. Among a great number of the 20th -c. monuments one cannot help singling out the monument to Sergey Korolyov, the Zhytomyr-born pioneer of Soviet astronautics. (more…)

The Zakarpattia Oblast (or Transcarpathia) is the nation’s westernmost oblast incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR during WWII in 1945. The province borders upon four countries: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Separated from the rest of Ukraine by the Ukrainian Carpathians and linked to it only by some mountain passes (Uzhotskyy, Veretskyy, Yablunytskyy and others), Zakarpattia has moulded its peculiar history, culture and mentality for many centuries.
The Carpathians with the Chornohora ridge (literally: Black Mountain), the highest massif in Ukraine (peaks Hoverla — 2,062 m, Brebeneskul — 2032 m, and Petros — 2,020 m) cover most of the province. The Transcarpathian lowland gently sloping from the mountains to the Tysa River lies in the northwestern part of the region. Wooded or treeless mesas (sub-alpine meadows called polonyna) alongside with the steep slopes of the deep Tysa, Latorytsia, Uzh river valleys, and the valleys of their plentiful tributaries, all belonging to the Danube basin, create panoramas of indescribable attractiveness.
Unearthed on the Tysa bank near the village of Koroleve is the earliest site of prehistoric hominins of the Lower Palaeolithic era (ca 500 thousand years ago). Numerous settlements of the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic eras have been discovered in the lowland and foothill districts of Zakarpattia.
Hungarian tribes (the Magyars) migrating from the Eastern European plains in the 9th —10 th c.c. gradually forced the East Slavs out of the region and established their rule over the whole territory in the 13 th c.
In the mid-16th c., Hungary and Transylvania were brought under Ottoman Empire suzerainty that lasted for more than a hundred years. When in the late 17th c. all of the former Hungarian lands were taken back from the Turks, the whole territory of Transcarpathia came under Austrian control of the Habsburgs. Between two World Wars, Zakarpattia was a part of Czechoslovakia. At the end of WW II, Transcarpathia, where ethnic Ukrainians were in majority, was incorporated into the USSR as the Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine.
Transcarpathia is chockfull of all-style monuments calling attention to a rather noteworthy history of the region: castles of the region’s rulers, a variety of Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish and other religious edifices of the 14th —20th c.c. Architectural heritage also embraces administrative buildings, city halls, palaces, gazeboes, various mansions and statues of the 18th —20th c.c. (more…)

Formed in 1939, the Zaporizka oblast is the youngest in Eastern Ukraine, with the landscape of carved loess plain, with a downward tilt towards the Dnipro Valley and the Sea of Azov. The most elevated, south-eastern part of the region lies on the Pre-Azov Upland descending into the Prychornomorya Lowland. The Dnipro Valley within Zaporizhzhia Oblast is almost entirely flooded by the Kakhovka and Dnipro waterreserves. Over centuries the small Pre-Azov rivers, i.e.Yushanly, Obytichna, Berda and others), have created sights of striking beauty by carving their way through the crystalloid rock of the Ukrainian Shield.
There is archeological evidence that the area has been populated since the mid-Paleolithic era (100 hundred years ago). The oldest archeological site is Kamyana Mohyla (5,000— 1,000 BC), near the village of Terpinnia, on the river Molochna. It owes its name to a six-metre mound of compressed silt, covered by a sandstone plate, in the shape of a coffin lid. This mound emerged as part of the Sarmatian seabed about 12 million years ago, and was later shaped by weathering. The sandstone broke up into over 3000 pieces of rock, some of which still bear ancient drawings (petroglyphs) on them.
In the 7th с. BC, Prychornomorya (the territories to the North of the Black Sea), was inhabited by the Scythians. Their capital is believed to have been on the Dnipro banks in what is now known as Kamyanske Horodysche, somewhere near the present-day city of Kamyanka-Dniprovska. The two well known mounds, Solokha and Melitopol, date from the Scythian heyday (approx. 7′th —4lh c.c. BC). In the Solokha mound, archeologists unearthed numerous golden coins and an ornate comb, while in the Melitopol, which was a catacomb-type burial site for Skythian nobility, they unearthed remains of chariots and horse bones dating from the 4|h с. BC. In the Princely times, the well-known waterway trade route from ‘the Varangians to the Greeks’ passed down the Dnipro, making it a much desired location to keep under control. In the mid-13′th c., the Pre-Dnipro lands fell to the Golden Horde. In the next few centuries the land was fought for by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by Rzeczpospolita, Muskovy and the Crimean Khanate.
At the end of the 15th c., the area became home to the Cossackdom (Brotherhood of Cossacks). Beyond the Dnipro Rapids, they started building ‘zasikas’ (fortresses), which gave the name to the Zaporozka Sich — a crucial point in Ukrainian history. Zaporozka Sich is, therefore, a general name for a large number of the Cossack fortified settlements, which existed during 15th —18th c.c. along the Dnipro in today’s Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions. (more…)

The Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (known as Stanislav Oblast in 1939—62), a province in Western Ukraine, was established in 1939 when as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the province was attached by the Soviet Union to the Ukrainian SSR.
The Gorgony and Chornohora ranges of the Ukrainian Carpathians (Mt Hoverla — 2061 m) cover the western part of the province. Along their northeastern edge, there lies the 50-km belt of the Pre-Carpathian plateau, limited by the deep and scenic Dniester River valley on the opposite side. A picturesque part of the Podillia Uplands called the Opillia Plateau forms the north of the province.
The valleys of the Dnistro and Prut Rivers, the principal rivers of the region, with the riverbeds of their numerous tributaries (the Bystrytsia, Zolota Lypa, Hnyla Lypa, Limnytsia, Pistynka, Cheremosh and others) abundant in bars and waterfalls, are strikingly beautiful.
The earliest settlements emerged in the Dniester valley in the Middle Paleolithic era (ca 100.000 years ago). In the Princely era, Peremyshl, Zvenyhorod, and Terebovlia Principalities were united into the Principality of Halych, the heyday of which fell on 1150 —1180s. In 1199, the Principality of Halych (Galicia) merged with the neighbouring Principality of Volyn into the large Principality of Halych-Volyn, which lasted for a century and a half. By the cost of accepting the suzerainty to the Golden Horde under Batu Khan in the mid-13th c. the Principality of Halych-Vblyn served as a barrier to the Mongols’ advancing farther into Europe. In 1349, Poland’s King Casimir III (Kazimierz) mounted a successful invasion, annexing the Principality of Halych-Volyn, and the domination of the Polish magnates and royal officials over the province lasted for more than four centuries.
After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the region came under the power of the House of Habsburg. In 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed in Stanislaviv. The Republic existed only for several months and its territory was annexed by the re-established Poland for a 20-year period until the outbreak of WWII.
Ivano-Frankivschyna is chockful of architectural monuments of a wide temporal array — from the Princely era up to the present day. They include multi-style variety of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Jewish architecture. Among them the wooden churches wrought by the Halychyna and Hutsul carpenters still arouse everybody’s admiration. (more…)

The Kyiv Oblast was established in 1932.
The Polissia Lowland forms the northern part of the province’s lands bordering on Belarus. The slightly elevated Dnipro Upland with gentle slopes and lots of river valleys, gullies, and ravines cover the central and south-western parts of the region. The eastern (Left-bank) part of the province lies on incredibly broad Dnipro terraces of the Dnipro Lowland. The climate of the Kyiv province is moderately continental, mild with a long, relatively warm winter and a warm, rather humid summer.
The Dnipro, the main river of Ukraine, cuts the region into the Right-bank (which is much larger) and the Left-bank parts. The construction of the Kyiv and Kaniv hydroelectric power plants (1960—70) and their reservoirs completed the construction of the cascade of water reserves on the Dnipro, which allowed minimizing greatly seasonal flooding in the riverside cities and villages. Flowing through the territory of the region, the Dnipro receives a number of large tributaries — the Prypyat, Desna, Teteriv, Irpin, Stuhna, Ros and others.
Early settlements in the Kyiv province appeared in the Lower Paleolithic era (20,000—15,000 years ago), whereas the Bronze Age (6,000—3,000 BC) saw the arrival of the soil-tilling and livestock-raising tribes who left behind the ample archaeological evidence of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. The region is also known for over 120 settlements and burial mounds of the Bronze Age (3,000—1,000 BC) and ca 90 archaeological finds of the Scythian Period (700—300 BC).
With the emergence of tribal unions the Polianians tribe shaped the most powerful principality in the Middle Pre-Dnipro region. In 9th —12th c.c., a powerful state of Kyivan (Kievan) Rus formed around it. In the Princely times, there were hundreds of settlements on the lands of what is now the Kyiv province, with a thriving trade and culture. The devastating 1237 — 40 Mongol Hordes invasion left most of the cities reduced to ashes, with their names only mentioning in the chronicle records.
In 1362, the lands became controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and after the Union of Lublin of 1569 they came under the power of Rzeczpospolita. The War of Liberation ended the Polish rule in the most of the region’s lands and a new regimental administrative and territorial division was established there in 1649. Soon after the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the 1654— 67 Russo-Polish war started, which resulted in Rzeczpospolita regaining its control over the Right-bank part of the region. (more…)