Museum of Kyiv History: From Podil to Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street

Kyiv has many wonderful museums dedicated to particular events (the Chornobyl Museum), cultural figures (the Bulgakov Museum), specific professions (the Museum of the History of Medicine), and even popular science (the Water Museum). But let's not forget the capital of Ukraine itself, with its rich history that it is ready to share with everyone. Where? At the Museum of Kyiv History, of course!

The decision to create a museum of the city's history was made by the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR in 1978.

In its earliest days, the museum was based in the House of Peter I in Podil. This is where the collection for future exhibitions began to take shape, made up mostly of items transferred by the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as gifts from Kyiv enterprises. But the collection did not stay there long. In 1982, the museum moved to the Klov Palace, which had previously housed an exhibition devoted to World War II.

The museum's first exhibition opened on May 26, 1982, with about 37 enterprises of the Ukrainian SSR taking part in its creation. At that time, the museum had eighteen exhibition halls, plus a temporary exhibition hall and an assembly hall, and its collection numbered about forty thousand items. The core collection consisted of archaeological finds, coins, maps, icons, postcards and everyday objects used by Kyivans in the early 20th century.

The museum stayed at the Klov Palace for 22 years. On May 26, 2004, the palace was handed over to the Supreme Court of Ukraine, and the Museum of Kyiv History closed its doors to visitors. The entire exhibition was dismantled and moved to one of the floors of the Ukrainian House on Khreshchatyk.

The city authorities, however, decided that such a treasure could not simply remain hidden from the public. In 2011, the Kyiv City State Administration announced that the museum would receive an office building on Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street.

The new museum building officially opened on May 27, 2012, and a few months later, on August 22, its exhibitions resumed.

The events in Ukraine in early 2014 also affected the museum. On the night of February 18–19, during the Revolution of Dignity, unknown vandals broke into the museum's storerooms and looted them. It is not known exactly how many items were lost.

The museum's collection features many fascinating objects: artifacts dating back to Kyivan Rus, a bas-relief of St. Michael the Archangel, insignia of graduates of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, and personal belongings of students and teachers of the Pavlo Galagan College, as well as works by Mykola Prakhov, Hryhorii Svitlytskyi, Wilhelm Kotarbinski and many other figures of Kyiv's art and culture.

Address: Kyiv, 7 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street.