Attractions of Sumy region

Leopold Koenig Manor (Holitsyn Palace) in Trostianets is a neoclassical manor house with Baroque elements, built in 1762 by the Nadarzhynskyi brothers next to the Round Yard Manor.

Prince Vasyl Holitsyn owned it for almost half a century from 1832, and in 1881 the estate became the property of the sugar factory Leopold Koenig, who carried out the reconstruction. Now the palace houses the Trostianets Museum and Exhibition Center.

The building is decorated with rich stucco on the facade and sculptures in the niches. The palace is surrounded by a luxurious park with a lake, a gazebo and park sculptures. The grand oak staircase to the second floor, door portals with volutes, and a dance hall decorated with stucco and sculpture have been preserved in the interior. In the summer of 1864, the composer Petro Tchaikovsky lived and worked in this house while visiting Oleksiy Holitsyn, here he wrote the overture to the drama "The Thunderstorm" – his first symphonic work. During Soviet times, the palace housed a kindergarten, then the building was empty for a long time. Restoration was carried out in 2007-2009.

Currently, the ballroom and other central premises of the palace house a picture gallery and a small exhibition dedicated to Petro Tchaikovsky (a room-museum of Tchaikovsky is planned to be opened on the second floor). The Trostianets Museum of Local Lore operates in the right wing. In 2012, a chocolate museum was opened in the left wing, where the products of the Trostianets chocolate factory "Mondelize" (formerly "Kraft Foods", "Ukraine"), which is now produced mainly under the "Korona" brand, are presented. A coffee room is also open.

RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR

During the large-scale Russian invasion in 2022, when Trostianets was under Russian occupation for a month, Leopold Koenig's estate was damaged. There was a partially destroyed room with a local history exposition. The museum needs restoration.

The Lesya Ukrayinka People's Museum was opened in Kosivshchyna in 1971 for the 100th anniversary of the poet's birth.

Lesya Ukrayinka's stay in Sumy region is connected with her treatment for tuberculosis. In 1889, the mother brought Lesya to the Kosivshchyna to the folk healer Paraska Boрush. Here the poetess wrote her "Spring Songs".

Lesya Ukrayinka's museum room is located in the local secondary school named after the poetess. Among the 600 exhibits are things that belonged to Paraska Boрush: a pot, a thick-walled pot for medicine, a trough, a towel. Lesya Ukrayinka's first collection "On the Wings of Songs" published in 1904, etc., is presented.

Excursions are conducted by young tour guides.

The Mammoth Monument in Kulishivka is the first such monument in the world. It is part of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Posulliia".

It was established in 1841 in honor of a paleontological find made in 1839 by the Ukrainian scientist-naturalist, professor of Kharkiv University, Ivan Kalynychenko. He unearthed a well-preserved skeleton of a mammoth discovered by local residents during excavations. The find was presented to the zoological office of Kharkiv University.

At the suggestion of Professor Kalynychenko and with the participation of the owner of the estate, Count Yuriy Holovkin, in 1841, a 3-meter cast-iron memorial was erected at the place where the bones were found.

The Kulishivka monument to the mammoth is now a landmark of the district and is even depicted on its coat of arms.

The People's Museum of Marshal of Armored Troops Pavlo Rybalko has been operating in the village of Malyi Vystorop since 1954, which is associated with the life and activities of this Soviet commander. It is located on the territory of the Malyi Vystorop Vocational College, which bears the name of Marshal Rybalko.

The museum building is a historical monument. It is the former estate of the Romanivskyi Sugar Factory, which was built in 1870.

Rybalko's wife, sister, and nephews helped local teachers and students create the museum. For many years, the institution has been headed by Marshal's great-grandson, Volodymyr Rybalko.

The current exhibition was created in 1984. The museum has several thematic rooms dedicated to Rybalko's childhood and family, his participation in the First and Second World Wars, as well as scientific and teaching activities after 1945. One of the rooms recreates his study - with furniture and a library. In general, the exhibition consists of photographs, newspaper clippings, posters, documents, objects, and clothing that belonged to Rybalko or have survived from that era.

It is planned to update the exposition in accordance with a modern view of the history of the 20th century.

Maydan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Sumy is the historical and administrative center of the city.

The city began from this place in the middle of the 17th century, when its founders, Colonel Herasym Kondratyev of the Sumy Slobid Cossack Regiment and Voivode Kyrylo Arsenyev, began to implement their plans for the construction and arrangement of the Sumy Fortress and its post.

In 1694, a wooden Mykolaiv church was built, which has not survived to this day. Already after the death of Colonel Kondratyev in 1702, the construction of the Resurrection Cathedral was completed, which is now the main decoration of the square. Mykolayivska and Voskresenska squares, formed around the churches, later merged into one.

For a long time, the square was called Petrivska because Tsar Peter I visited it on the eve of the Battle of Poltava. After the Second World War, the square was reconstructed, at that time it was named after Lenin. In 1991, it was renamed Maydan Nezalezhnosti.

The buildings are dominated by high-rise buildings of the regional council and the Sumy hotel.

The village of Nova Sloboda in the Sumy region is called the Ukrainian Khatyn, because in 1942 the German occupiers shot 586 villagers to take revenge for the help of the villagers to the partisan unit of Sydor Kovpak.

In 2004, the "Bell of Sorrow" memorial was opened in the center of Nova Sloboda - a monument to the unconquered village and its brave inhabitants.

The monument is made in the shape of a bell, inside there is a small chapel, the names of all those who died in that tragedy are engraved on the marble slabs.

The Michael's Virgin Land Nature Reserve is a unique area of virgin meadow steppe with an area of 202 hectares, which has never been touched by a plow.

Since 1741, these lands belonged to the Kapnist Counts, who bred Oryol trotters at their stud farm in Mykhailivka. Large areas of the steppe were set aside for pastures and therefore were never plowed.

In 1928, "Michael's Virgin Land" was declared a reserve, until recently it was part of the Ukrainian Steppe Nature Reserve (in 2009, it was allocated to a separate protected area). The territory of the reserve, surrounded by a protective afforestation, is a low hill that gradually descends to the surrounding streams. The total area of the reserve is 882.9 hectares.

More than 500 types of herbs grow here, 38 of which are protected (11 are listed in the Red Book of Ukraine). Since they bloom at different times, the steppe changes color 10-12 times during the summer.

Brown hares, foxes and small rodents live in the reserve.

Excursions to the "Michael's Virgin Land" are organized by the Lebedyn city museum of local lore.

The People`s Museum of the History of Mountaineering has been operating in the Sumy Palace of Children and Youth at the Abalakovets Club since 1977.

The museum's exposition is divided into 21 thematic sections, which present more than 8 thousand exhibits. These are photographs, newspapers, personal belongings of climbers, equipment, awards, flags, pennants, signs of the most outstanding ascents, memoirs, autographed books, reports, maps, diagrams, stones from the peaks.

All of them demonstrate the history of the development of mountaineering. In 2000, a new section "Ukrainian climbers on eight-thousanders" was opened.

The school museum of ethnography "Belfry of Revelation of Eternity" operates at the Romny Secondary School №5.

He has five expositions: "Towels of his native land", "Heritage through the eyes of children", "Bread is the head of everything", "Holodomor of 1932-1933", "Easter pysanka".

The exposition of the local lore museum "Petro Chaykovsky and Ukraine" is located in the village of Nyzy in the manor house of the landowner Mykola Kondratyev, who was a guest of the outstanding composer Petro Chaykovsky every summer in 1871-1879.

Kondratyev was introduced to Chaykovsky by his friend Oleksiy Holitsyn from nearby Trostianets (there is also a Chaykovsky museum there). In Nysy, the composer worked on the operas "Cherevychky", "Oprychnyk", the Second and Third symphonies, created several piano pieces and romances. He dedicated the cycle of plays "Evening Dreams" to Kondratyev, "Salon Waltz" to his wife, "Little Waltz" to his daughter, and "Sentimental Waltz" to his governess.

The next owner of the manor, Dmytro Sukhanov, a sugar factory, demolished the wing where Chaykovsky lived during the reconstruction, but the main building was preserved.

In Soviet times, a sugar factory club was located here, then a high school. Since 1990, a part of the premises has housed a permanent exhibition-museum of Chaykovsky, recreating the atmosphere of the 19th century. The exposition dedicated to the composer is made up of the exhibits of the Sumy Regional Museum of Local Lore.

The building is in dire need of repair. Due to the lack of heating, the museum "Petro Chaykovsky and Ukraine" is open only in the summer.

The church of Mykola Kozatskyi in the Ukrainian Baroque style was built in the 18th century at the expense of the residents of Putyvl - Ukrainian Cossacks.

It has an unusual silhouette with two towers of equal height. Initially, the temple was built in three parts and with one roof, but later a multi-tiered belfry was added to it from the western side. On the first floor of the two-story church is a "warm church" with low vaults. On the second floor is a "cold church" with a high central top.

The restoration was recently completed, and the museum exhibition "The Tale of Ihor's Campaign" is planned to be opened in the church.

The memorial museum complex of the Ukrainian artist, painter, and graphic artist Mykola Storozhenko opened in his small homeland, in the village of Vyazove, in 2018, on the occasion of the artist's 90th birthday.

Mykola Storozhenko is an academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, People's Artist of Ukraine, professor, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, founder and long-time head of the Painting and Temple Culture Workshop at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. He belonged to the circle of the second wave of the National Renaissance in Ukraine, the "sixties", which included such iconic figures as Opanas Zalyvakha, Lyudmyla Semykina, Yurii Yakutovych, Alla Horska, Viktor Zaretsky, Halyna Sevruk, Valentyn Zadorozhny. All of them were open to experiments with different materials in order to carry out a high synthesis, combining the achievements of Ukrainian folk art, the experience of the Ukrainian avant-garde, and European modernism.

In addition to the artist's works, the museum's exhibits also feature the artist's memorial items donated to the museum by his family - books, brushes and paints, gifts and awards.

The house where Mykola Storozhenko lived and the school where Storozhenko studied and painted his first works have been preserved on the territory of Vyazove.

The Church of the Nativity of Christ, which is part of the ensemble of the Holy Intercession Cathedral in Okhtyrka, is called the "Count's Church" because it was built at the expense of Countess Anna Chernyshova.

According to legend, her mother, Baroness fon Vedel (Veydel), fell fatally ill in Okhtyrka on the way to St. Petersburg. Before her death in the Intercession Church, she had an apparition of the Mother of God, who ordered her to give away her wealth to beggars, and promised to take her two young daughters under her care. Soon after the death of the baroness, her orphaned daughters ended up at court and successfully married, and since then they made large donations to the Intercession Temple. In particular, they financed the construction of the Nativity of Christ Church.

The temple is original in terms of its volume-spatial and decorative solution, and is more like a palace building than a religious one. Indeed, living rooms were provided in the side rooms, in which the pious countess often lived for months, spending time in prayers.

The Church of the Nativity of Christ is the oldest building in Shostka. The construction of the city began in 1779 with its establishment. The construction lasted 6 years.

The Church of the Nativity of Christ was built on the private donations of workers and employees of the powder factory. In 1809, a bell tower was added.

All solemn events in Shostka were held on the Church Square near the Church of the Nativity of Christ: processions, military parades, solemn religious services.

The Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin in Yunakivka is an outstanding monument of classicism architecture.

The beautiful five-headed two-story church in the style of classicism, designed by the architect Oleksandr Palytsyn, resembles the works of the late 18th-early 19th century architect Dzhakomo Kvarenhi. Construction began in 1793 on the site of the old wooden church and lasted 13 years at the expense of Prince Mykhaylo Holitsyn. The stone temple had three thrones: in the name of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Michael the Archstrategist and the main one - in honor of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos.

In 1874, the warm church of the Three Saints was also arranged in the lower basement floor of the temple. There was a church-parochial school.

The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin remained active for a long time even under Soviet power, but was closed in the 1960s, and has reached our days in a half-ruined state.