From Rus to today

Archaeologists have found traces of settlement on Kyiv's hills long before the 10th century, but the city's rise began when it became the seat of the Rurikid state. After the Christianisation, Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavych built a fortified "town of Volodymyr" on Starokyivska Hill with Kyiv's first stone church, the Church of the Tithes.

Yaroslav the Wise, who ruled Kyiv in 1016–1018 and 1019–1054, enlarged the fortified area several times over: new ramparts with the Golden Gate, St Sophia's Cathedral and the monasteries of St George and St Irene. Scribes and copyists worked at St Sophia. Nobody knows exactly how many people lived in Kyiv then: historians speak of several tens of thousands. Petro Tolochko put the population of 12th- and early 13th-century Kyiv at 45,000–50,000, although archaeologists today consider that figure somewhat high. Either way, Kyiv was among the largest European cities of its day.

The merchant quarter of Podil linked the city to the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks". From the 12th century, as Rus split into rival principalities, princes fought over the Kyiv throne: in 1169 the city was sacked by a coalition led by Andrei Bogolyubsky, and in 1203 by Rurik Rostislavich and his Cuman allies.

After the siege of 1240 Kyiv lost its former grandeur for centuries. In the 1360s the city came under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in 1471 the Principality of Kyiv was abolished and turned into a voivodeship. At the end of the 15th century the townspeople received Magdeburg rights — self-government with an elected magistrate and a voit — which lasted until 1835.

After the Union of Lublin in 1569 the Kyiv region passed to the Polish Crown. In the early 17th century Kyiv became a cultural capital again: the Brotherhood School was founded in 1615, and in 1632 Metropolitan Petro Mohyla merged it with the Lavra school to create the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium, later an academy.

During the Khmelnytsky Uprising Kyiv gave Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky a triumphal welcome. In the second half of the 17th century the city passed to Muscovy — temporarily under the Truce of Andrusovo (1667) and for good under the "Eternal Peace" of 1686 — while keeping its magistrate and Cossack regiment. Hetman Ivan Mazepa generously funded church building, and this is when the distinctive Ukrainian Baroque style took shape; it still defines Kyiv's skyline.

In the 19th century Kyiv lost what remained of its self-government — Magdeburg rights were abolished in 1835 — but grew fast as the administrative centre of the empire's south-western provinces. After the great fire of 1811 Podil was rebuilt on a regular street grid, a new fortress went up in Pechersk, and the Khreshchatyk valley became the city's main street.

St Volodymyr University opened in 1834, conceived as a pillar of imperial policy after the Polish November Uprising — yet it trained generations of Ukrainian scholars. The real boom came with the railway and sugar: the Tereshchenko, Brodsky, Kharytonenko and Khanenko families made fortunes from sugar refineries and spent them on hospitals, schools, churches and art collections that are museums today.

The 1897 census counted about 248,000 inhabitants, and the population kept growing until the First World War. Electric trams, running water, the funicular, Art Nouveau apartment buildings and the first "skyscrapers" made Kyiv one of the most modern cities of the empire.

In March 1917 the Ukrainian Central Rada was formed in Kyiv. It proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic and, on 22 January 1918, its independence. Over the next few years control of the city changed hands more than a dozen times: the UPR, the Bolsheviks, Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky's Ukrainian State, the Directorate, Denikin's Whites and the Polish army.

In 1934 the capital of Soviet Ukraine was moved from Kharkiv to Kyiv. In the same years the authorities destroyed dozens of monuments, including St Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral, and secretly buried thousands of NKVD victims in the Bykivnia forest. The Nazi occupation of 1941–1943 brought the tragedy of Babyn Yar, where tens of thousands of Jews were murdered, along with Roma, prisoners of war, psychiatric patients and Ukrainian resistance members.

After liberation on 6 November 1943 the city was rebuilt: Khreshchatyk rose again in post-war neoclassical style, the metro opened in 1960, and new housing estates spread across the left bank. April 1986 brought the Chornobyl disaster; the late 1980s brought the People's Movement of Ukraine, the students' "Revolution on Granite" and the road to independence.

On 24 August 1991 the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv adopted the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, confirmed by a nationwide referendum on 1 December. October Revolution Square was renamed Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), and Soviet names and monuments gradually disappeared from the city.

The 1990s were hard — hyperinflation, coupons, queues — but this is when Kyiv got back its lost landmarks: St Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral, the Dormition Cathedral of the Lavra and the Pyrohoshcha Church were rebuilt. For the 10th anniversary of independence the Maidan was redesigned and the Independence Monument erected.

In the autumn of 2004 hundreds of thousands of people filled the Maidan to protest against a rigged presidential election; the Orange Revolution was a peaceful victory for citizens. Kyiv hosted Eurovision and the Euro 2012 final and kept growing with new neighbourhoods, cafés, festivals and IT companies.

The protest that began on the Maidan on 21 November 2013, after the government refused to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, grew into the Revolution of Dignity. In February 2014 more than a hundred protesters were killed in central Kyiv — the "Heavenly Hundred". Instytutska Street, where snipers opened fire, is now a place of remembrance.

On 24 February 2022 Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and one of its main thrusts was aimed at Kyiv. Ukrainian forces stopped the enemy on the approaches to the city — in Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and Moshchun — and by early April the Kyiv region had been liberated. Since then the capital has lived under missile and drone attacks and through blackouts, yet it keeps working, studying, going to concerts and volunteering.

Kyiv is deliberately shedding its imperial and Soviet legacy: hundreds of streets and several metro stations have been renamed, and the Soviet coat of arms on the Motherland Monument has been replaced with the Ukrainian trident. The city is rediscovering its history — from the princes of Rus to today's heroes.