Kyiv Metro Museum: The Story of the City's Subway

What do most of us know about the Kyiv Metro? It runs underground, and its trains travel along three lines marked red, blue and green on the map. True enough — but is that really all there is to it? Of course not. The first section of the Kyiv Metro opened back in 1960, so the city's subway has a long and eventful history. To learn more about that history and about what goes on behind the scenes underground, pay a visit to the Kyiv Metro Museum.

The museum opened in 2000 and occupies the second floor of the Kyiv Metro administration building. Its exhibition fills three halls and holds more than two thousand items, with new ones added all the time. Fittingly, the very first trains in the Kyiv Metro had three cars — quite possibly the reason the museum has exactly three halls.

The first hall tells the story of how the metro was built. Here you will find unique photographs and documents from the early years of construction and operation. There is more: personal belongings of former metro chiefs, the awards and orders the metro has received over the years, and a working 1:87 scale model of Dnipro station, with the depot shown exactly as it looked when the metro first started running in 1960–1965. You can watch with your own eyes how the cars were lifted up onto the station's elevated track.

The second hall is dedicated to the metro workers who left their mark on its creation. Each display tells the story of a particular department and the people who work in it. Fans of scale modeling and engineering will enjoy the models of train cars and their equipment, while serious collectors will find plenty of interest too: the hall holds a large collection of tickets and tokens, not only from Kyiv but from metro systems all over the world. Its prize piece is one of the very first tickets ever issued for the Kyiv Metro.

The third hall covers the work of the metro's security staff, as well as the computer and control centers that make sure trains arrive and depart on time. The star exhibit here is the clock from the metro's central clock station, which once synchronized the time and the intervals between trains across the network.

Everyone knows the Kyiv Metro, but few know how it came to be or the people who put so much effort into making this huge project a reality. The Kyiv Metro Museum is a great place for anyone who wants to learn more about Kyiv and its subway. Tours are free of charge and are given by appointment. And if you own something connected with the history of the city's metro, you are welcome to donate it to the museum — the staff will be truly grateful.

Address: 35 Beresteiskyi Avenue (formerly Peremohy Avenue), Kyiv.