Museum of History and Ethnography of Romanians in Zakarpattia "Romanian Manor".
The museum is located in the village of Nyzhnya Apsha, Tyachiv district, Zakarpattia region, Ukraine. Nyzhnya Apsha is the largest Romanian settlement on the right bank of the Tisza River, with the majority of the population being of Romanian origin: according to the last census in Ukraine in 2001, 97.69% of the village’s inhabitants speak Romanian, 1.59% Ukrainian and 0.5% other languages. The village was documented in 1387, being a part of Maramures County until 1 December 1918, it was also a part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and from 1867 to 1 December 1918 it was a part of Austria-Hungary, from 1 December 1918 to 26 July 1921 the village was a part of the Romanian state, de facto and de jure, of Maramures County, then the village fell under the jurisdiction of Czechoslovakia until the end of 1938, for a short time it was part of Carpathian Ukraine – until 24 March 1939 after the occupation and passed under the jurisdiction of Khortyska Hungary until 20 October 1944, when the “liberators”, i.e. Russians, entered the village and annexed Zakarpattia to Soviet Ukraine – the Soviet Union. Since 24 August 1991, we have been part of independent Ukraine.
The museum is located at 17 Borkaniuk Street, popularly called “Drumul Tsarii”, the main road is Uzhhorod – Rakhiv – Yasynia. The district centre of Tyachiv is 22 km away, the regional centre is 165 km away, and the Romanian city of Sighet, Maramures county, Romania, is 11 km away.
It was officially established as a legal entity on 27 September 2014 and registered with the Tyachiv District Administration on 05.09.2014. The first steps to create this museum were taken in 1984. I was young with my wife Ilyana and walking down the street, we noticed an old lamp in an old Maramorosh house. It was hanging in the room next to the light bulb, smoky and of no value to the owner. I asked my wife to go to my grandmother Borchanului (her name is Aksenia) and buy the lamp from her. The next day, my wife bought the lamp for 25 rubles (the equivalent of almost $40, my dentist’s salary was 110 rubles at the time). My wife kept asking me why we needed this lamp, and I told her that we would take it home and see… That was the beginning…
We structured (divided) the museum into the following sections: – The section of the Romanian peasant; – The section of ethnography; – The section of old books; – Documentation; – Numismatics; – Medallic; – Library; – Archive.
Museum of Mountain Ecology and the History of Nature Use in the Ukrainian Carpathians.
The Museum of Mountain Ecology and the History of Nature Management in the Ukrainian Carpathians is the only and unique museum and one of the most famous tourist attractions in Zakarpattia. Since its inception, the museum has become widely known and popular not only in Ukraine but also in many countries around the world.
The museum exposition, which covers more than a thousand square metres, consists of two organically combined sections: Natural Ecosystems of the Carpathians and History of Nature Management in the Ukrainian Carpathians. The first section provides information on the history of the Carpathian Mountains, their geology, geomorphology, main types of landscapes, flora and fauna, as well as the mountains in general as a unique natural phenomenon. This section is complemented by an aquatic terrarium complex, which contains a working model of a mountain watercourse with characteristic aquatic and near-water inhabitants. Carpathian and alpine newts, fire salamander, brittle spindlefish, various species of frogs and fish, common snake and forest snake can be not only seen but also held in hands.
The second part of the exposition reveals the main directions of nature management in the Ukrainian Carpathians – from the origins of human settlement of these lands, which began in the Late Paleolithic period about 20,000 years ago, to the present day. The museum reveals the uniqueness and originality of traditional mountain farming, forestry, mountain meadow farming, etc., which are an integral part of the cultural heritage of the Ukrainian highlanders.
A variety of exhibition forms and means were used to highlight the museum’s themes. These include dioramas, models, dummies, panels, complex stands, panoramas, etc. filled with natural exhibits and artefacts. Among them are rich geological, paleontological, zoological, archaeological collections, elements of folk life and culture.
The Museum hosts various environmental events with schoolchildren, student groups, tourists and local residents, making it a real environmental, educational and cultural centre.
Interesting knowledge is the main treasure that visitors receive in our Museum: where the largest karst cave in the Carpathians “Druzhba” is located, the beech forests of the Carpathians – a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, the only plain area where the narrow-leaved daffodil grows, and much more. It will also be interesting to hear about when the first human settlements appeared in the Carpathians, or how mountain farming is carried out and bryndza, which has received a geographical indication, is made, or how timber was floated down rivers. You can also play the trembita, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest wooden wind instrument in the world, the tsymbaly and the drymba. Another attractive service is taking photos in Hutsul costumes with traditional decorations such as embroidery, kutas, tassels, etc.
Every year, the Museum is visited by thousands of tourists from Ukraine and abroad.
There are interesting objects around the Museum that will diversify leisure time and help you get closer to nature.
- Ecological trail “Respect Nature”
- Recreational area “Waterfall of Health”;
- Ecotourism route to the mineral spring (0.7 km, 15 minutes walk);
- Arboretum and collection area with local and exotic plants.
The museum can also serve as a starting point for travelling to the natural gems of the reserve and the Rakhiv mountainous region. After all, the geographical centre of Europe, the Lykhyi, Yalyn and Trufanets waterfalls, and the former Habsburg hunting grounds in the Kuziy tract are very close, or, as people say, just a stone’s throw away.
Park - Museum "Carpathians in Miniature".
Here you can get acquainted with the famous cultural heritage sites, architectural monuments and interesting natural objects of the Yaremche region. All copies of the park’s exhibits are 25 times smaller than the original size of the popular tourist attractions. But despite such a tiny size, every line, carving, colour and even the material of the monuments were preserved and reproduced with jewellery precision.
Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary belongs to the Hutsul school of traditional church building. The building is cruciform in plan, five-storeyed, and one-storeyed. Thanks to the artistic means, perfect proportions, good location and a raised stone base, the interior space of the church, despite its small size, impresses with its high-rise solemnity.
According to one of the most common versions, the church was built in 1615 in the village of Yablunytsia, and allegedly moved to Vorokhta in 1780 over a new cemetery. In 1860, the church was moved to a new location, where it stands today. A Lviv researcher of sacred buildings, Vasyl Slobodian, based on the 1826 Inventory of the Church in Vorokhta, which is kept in the Central State Archives of Ukraine in Lviv, deduces another date for the construction of the church – 1811. This document contains the following information: “Built on behalf of the church pharmacists before 15 years at the expense of the citizens of Mykulychyn and Vorokhta, it is covered with shingles, has one dome crowned with an iron cross… This church is in good condition and can be valued at 200 florins.” The land for the construction of the church was donated by the Mocherniak family.
The first memorial cross, which was laid by the church council in 1785, has been preserved in front of the church, and the interior has wall paintings of the XIX century.
This church was built without a single nail and is considered to be the most perfect in form and architectural proportions.
It is an architectural monument of national importance.
Hutsulshchyna Museum of History and Local Lore.
Verkhovyna is one of the largest Hutsul regions in the Carpathians. It is here, living in an area remote from large settlements, that over the centuries the locals have been best able to preserve their traditions and protect them from the influence of the “outside world”. Today, the museum has eight halls on the ground floor and the Hutsul Room on the second floor. The exhibition halls present the main thematic sections about the region of ethnic Hutsulshchyna: local lore, history, natural history, material and spiritual culture, festivals, population, diaspora, Hutsul economy, folk arts and crafts, science, culture, weaving, and ethnography of Hutsulshchyna.
Petro Shekeryk-Donykiv Memorial Museum, Kryivka Museum.
Petro Shekerik-Donikov belongs to the cohort of the most famous and conscious Ukrainian Hutsuls who cared with all their hearts and souls about their native mountains, their sweet and dear Hutsul land. He fought against the invaders-conquerors of all stripes who oppressed his Hutsul brothers and destroyed their native land.
Petro Shekerik-Donikiv was born in the village of Holovy, and spent almost all his life in Zhab’ya, which Ivan Franko called the capital of Hutsulshchyna. He graduated from a four-year school, and thanks to his teacher Luka Harmatii, he was engaged in self-education, teaching his fellow countrymen to read and write.
Petro Shekerik-Donikiv was an organiser of the Sich in the Hutsul region, in Kamianets-Podilskyi and Vinnytsia. During the Polish occupation, he served in the 24th Infantry Regiment of Kolomyia and thanks to his persistence, the soldiers were allowed to speak Ukrainian. Ambassador of the Hutsuls to the Polish Sejm, active member of the Ukrainian Radical Party, organiser of volunteers for the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Delegate to the Ukrainian National Council of the ZUNR. Participated in the historic event of the Unification of the ZUNR and the UPR on St Sophia’s Square in Kyiv.
A native Hutsul, a son of the Carpathian Mountains, a long-time starost of the Zhabievo Commune, one of the founders and an amateur actor of the Hnat Khotkevych Hutsul Theatre in Krasnoyillia, a collector of folklore and ethnographic values, helped Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi to immerse himself in the unique and amazing Hutsul world and collect invaluable material for his literary gem, the story Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which resulted in Serhiy Parajanov’s masterpiece film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
According to the Polish writer Stanisław Wincenza, Petro Shekerik-Donik “was a talented man, if not a genius”. His literary masterpiece, the novel Dido Ivanchyk, written in the language of his Hutsul ancestors, is a treasure trove that will forever preserve the spirit of Hutsul identity, echoes of Hutsul antiquity, and the material and spiritual world of the Hutsul region. The novel was published 67 years later, the manuscript of which was kept by his wife Paraska and passed on to his daughter Anna, and the Hutsulshchyna Society framed the masterpiece of Hutsul old times in 2012 in the book Dido Ivanchyk.
The last page in the manuscript of the novel is dated by the author’s hand on 20 April 1940, and three weeks later Petro Shekerik-Donikov was arrested by the Muscovites. After the trial, the slave road led to Siberia, where the traces of the faithful son of Hutsulshchyna were lost forever. However, the memory of the repressed writer and public figure, the defender of the Hutsuls and his native land, lives on and will live forever. On 25 June 2018, the Petro Shekerik Donikovyi Museum was opened in the Hutsul capital, Verkhovyna. According to the writer’s descendants, Nadiya Mikivnychuk and her father Ivan Makivnychuk, the house where the memorial museum is opened has been preserved in its original form, as it was during the writer’s lifetime. Kateryna Shekeriak-Makivnychuk inherited the house: she gave it to her granddaughter Nadiya, who decided to open the museum together with her father.
The hiding place of the Ukrainian Povtan Army soldiers – one would not immediately guess that this is the entrance to a hiding place, because it looks like an ordinary water well. The founders of the museum, the Makivnychuk family from Verkhovyna, specifically designed the interior and exterior to resemble the times of the underground.
Museum of Ethnography, Life and Musical Instruments by Roman Kumlyk.
The museum was organised in the early 2000s. The materials have been collected over 30 years, including household items, ancient Hutsul clothing, tools, banknotes of different times, and much more, which gives an idea of the life of the Hutsuls. The collection of musical instruments is particularly noteworthy, including violins (including long-bowed violins and a rectangular violin), tsymbaly, koza (bagpipe), drymbas, trembitas, horns, and others.
Kosiv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts of Lviv National Academy of Arts.
Kosiv Art School is a leading regional higher education institution that has celebrated its 140th anniversary and is of great importance for the development of culture and art not only in the Carpathian region but also throughout Ukraine. The Institute and the College of Decorative and Applied Arts perform an important national task – to preserve and give a modern sound to folk crafts, to develop the tradition through the synthesis of culture and life of the Hutsul region, a protected artistic land that requires not only detailed study but also enrichment through awareness and perception of the past. Graduates of the institution are donors of artistic personnel for centres of folk arts and crafts that are disappearing or on the verge of extinction, and are the bearers of Ukrainian traditional culture and its future.
Yosaphat Kobrynskyi National Museum of Hutsulshchyna and Pokuttia Folk Art.
Over its almost century-long history, the Kobrynsky National Museum of Folk Art of Hutsulshchyna and Pokuttia has become a significant cultural institution for research, preservation and promotion of folk culture and artistic heritage of the Carpathian region.
It was founded in 1926 on the initiative of Volodymyr Kobrynskyi as the first Ukrainian Folk Museum in Galicia. It is located in the former People’s House, built at the expense of the Ukrainian community of the city (1895-1902) with the active participation of the Greek Catholic priest, parish priest from the village of Myshyn, Josaphat Kobrynskyi. The museum was opened to the public on 31 December 1934.
The museum’s collection includes about 50,000 items dating from the 17th to the 21st centuries. However, some exhibits date back to the 4th millennium BC and represent the agricultural culture known in archaeological and historical science as Trypillian. The museum collection is the largest and most complete collection of Hutsul folk art in the world and annually attracts 300,000 visitors from over 70 countries.
All types of traditional folk art of Hutsuls and Pokutians are presented in 18 exhibition halls: artistic woodworking, metal and leather processing, pottery, decorative weaving, carpet weaving, embroidery, clothing and jewellery. In addition to traditional folk culture, the museum has a permanent exhibition of sacred and fine art, a department of traditional Carpathian furniture, and a recreation of the exterior of a Hutsul dwelling and the courtyard of a hut-grazhda. The museum exposition is completed by a recreated memorial room of the famous public and political figure, writer Andriy Tchaikovsky, whose political and literary heritage was banned in Soviet times.
The museum was granted national status in 2009 by a Presidential Decree for the uniqueness of the collections collected and preserved under totalitarian regimes and international recognition.
The National Museum has four branches: The Museum of Easter Egg Painting, the Kosiv Museum of Hutsul Folk Art and Life, the Yaremche Museum of Ethnography and Ecology of the Carpathian Region, and the Shukhevych Family Museum-Estate in the village of Tyshkivtsi, Horodenka District.
Branch: Easter Egg Museum (Pysanka).
Address: 43b Chornovola Street, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine
Phone: +380343347513
Email: pysanka@hutsul.museum
Website: https://pysanka.museum
Social networks: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069078320931
The world’s only Museum of Easter Egg Painting, a branch of the Y. Kobrynskyi National Museum of Folk Art of Hutsulshchyna and Pokuttia, was opened on 24 October 1987 in the premises of the Church of the Annunciation, an architectural monument of the late sixteenth century (1587). In 2000, an original building in the shape of a pysanka egg over 13 metres high was built especially for the museum, and the Pysanka Museum itself became a visiting card of the city and the region, visited annually by about one hundred thousand tourists from Ukraine and more than 70 countries. Tourists are attracted by both the original building and the opportunity to see a variety of original miniature masterpieces. The museum’s exposition includes about three thousand unique exhibits: pysankas, malyovankas, driapankas created on chicken, goose, ostrich or quail shells, as well as decorative eggs decorated with various techniques. In total, the museum’s collection includes more than 12,000 pieces. A significant part of the collection belongs to Easter eggs from the Hutsul and Pokuttia regions, where the ancient tradition of Easter egg making was uninterrupted and on the basis of which the museum’s collection was formed. It is therefore symbolic that the renewal and modernisation of the exhibition began with the hall where they are presented. Thanks to the project supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the exhibition equipment and lighting were completely renewed, a video installation and three-dimensional stained-glass compositions were created, which enhance the emotional perception of the exhibition, making it more accessible to people with visual and hearing impairments and generally more interesting for visitors of all ages. The collection includes Easter eggs from all historical and ethnographic regions of Ukraine and more than thirty countries of the world where Ukrainians have spread Easter egg art or preserved local traditions of decorating eggs as a symbol of the birth of the world and life. Decorative eggs made of semi-precious stones or decorated with various techniques come from India, Turkey, China, Israel, gilded eggs from Egypt, silver pysanky coins from Canada, pysanky, malyovanky, driapanky, decorative eggs from Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, France…
The oldest not only in our collection, but also in Ukraine is a 500-year-old Easter egg painted with natural dyes on a goose egg, which was found in Lviv during archaeological excavations. The Museum of Easter Egg Painting is a nominee of the All-Ukrainian campaign “7 Wonders of Ukraine” (ranked 8th), was awarded for its high tourist rating by the world’s most famous travel website TRIPADVISOR, and was recognised at the state level as a tourist “magnet” of Prykarpattia. In 2018, the element “Tradition of Hutsul Easter eggs” was included in the National List of Elements of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine, which was submitted by the Museum of Easter Egg Painting to the Expert Council of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. Throughout the year, the museum hosts masterclasses in Easter egg painting and other art forms, which can be attended by prior arrangement, and exhibitions of various genres. The Museum of Easter Egg Painting gave impetus to the launch of the annual All-Ukrainian Folklore Festival “Pysanka” in Kolomyia, which usually takes place on Palm Sunday and brings together Easter egg painters, folk art researchers, and artists from all over Ukraine and many countries of the world for two days.
Branch: Kosiv Museum of Folk Art and Rural Life of Hutsul Region.
Address: 55 Nezalezhnosti Street, Kosiv, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine
Phone: +380347821643, +380968469984
Email: kosivmuzeum@gmail.com
Social networks: https://www.facebook.com/kosivmuseum
The museum is located in the city centre, on Independence Square. The building is known locally as the Rabbi’s Wall. Before the Second World War, it belonged to the Jewish community and served as a residence for a rabbi. The building attracts attention with its classical architectural forms and is a monument of architecture and urban planning of the late nineteenth century.
The museum collection includes about 6 thousand items. It was based on the once well-known collection of Hutsul artworks of the couple Yevhen and Zoia Sahaidachnyi, who settled in Kosiv after the Second World War. Yevhen Sahaidachnyi was a Ukrainian artist, theatre decorator, sculptor, teacher, ethnographer and collector.
A visit to the museum begins with a tour of the exhibition halls, where exhibitions of contemporary art change every month. Painters, graphic artists, sculptors, photographers, designers, collectors and masters of decorative art from different parts of Ukraine present their works here.
The permanent exhibition of the Kosiv Museum of Hutsulshchyna features more than 700 unique exhibits. They are housed in four spacious themed halls: “Hutsul costumes and life”, “Ceramics”, “Artistic woodworking” and “Textiles”. Most of the exhibits date back to the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. The pearls of the collection are the works of the coryphaei of Hutsul folk art: Oleksa Bakhmatyuk, Yurii Shkribliak, Vasyl Devdiuk and many others. Acquaintance with the museum artefacts reveals the historical value and continuity of the traditions of Hutsul folk crafts that exist in Kosiv district to this day.
The highlight of the museum is a unique interactive exhibition dedicated to the history of Kosiv painted ceramics. Visitors can actively interact with its elements: explore, touch, watch videos, look into drawers and caskets, and perform various game tasks. The hall is equipped with designer showcases for ceramic artefacts from the museum’s collection. Original products by Oleksa Bakhmatyuk, Pavlyna Tsvilyk and other famous potters are displayed alongside historical photographs and interesting texts.
Another innovation of the exhibition is its accessibility for blind visitors. This is the only permanent exhibition of ceramics in Ukraine that is partially adapted for the visually impaired.
Today, the Kosiv Museum of Hutsulshchyna is one of the most popular cultural leisure centres in the area: museum staff regularly organise exhibitions, art events, masterclasses, interactive children’s activities and quests. For fifty years in a row, the institution has been bringing together masters of folk art, enthusiastic ethnographers and connoisseurs of Hutsul history and culture.
Branch: Yaremche Museum of Ethnography and Ecology of Carpathian Region.
Address: 269 Svobody Street, Yaremche, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine
Phone: +380343422208, +380984407644
Email: yar.museum@gmail.com
Social networks: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076014465497
In a picturesque part of the Carpathians, not far from the foot of Hoverla, where the waters of the fast-flowing Prut are born, there is a beautiful town of Yaremche. Today, it is one of the largest tourist centres with a number of hotels, holiday homes, entertainment complexes and art fairs. This was facilitated by scientific research of the region, which has been gaining more and more publicity since the second half of the nineteenth century. Industrial and ethnographic exhibitions played an important role in popularising the region, one of the first of which was the economic and industrial exhibition in Kolomyia in 1880. Here, for the first time, the folk artists of the region presented their works: carver Andrii Tymchuk from Dora, embroiderers Yevdokiia Orfeniuk from Mykulychyn and Hanna Mysiuk from Yamna, and women’s beaded jewellery by Mariia Filiak from Mykulychyn. Subsequently, in the twentieth century, the works of Hutsul masters were presented at the exhibition of books and press held in Vorokhta in 1938. This popularisation of traditional Hutsul culture was the impetus for the formation of Hilovskyi’s private collection in Yaremche, which included more than 700 pieces of art and household items of the Hutsuls. Thus, in the 1930s, the first museum was founded in Yaremche, and in the early 1960s, the creation of the local history museum began, which opened in 1963.
The purpose of this museum is to demonstrate the traditional life support system of the Carpathian ethnic group in the natural and socio-cultural conditions of their habitat, the use of the natural environment by the ethnic group, the traditions of rational nature management, the patterns of formation and functioning of ethno- and ecosystems, and the presentation of all types of traditional folk art of the inhabitants of the Carpathian region.
In recent years, the Yaremche Museum has become a cultural and artistic centre for the community and guests of the city, where all talented artists, both domestic and foreign, can receive residencies, where everyone can share their art and find like-minded people.
Art Museum of Prykarpattia.
The Museum of Arts of Prykarpattia is a rich treasure trove of fine and folk art of the region. Currently, the 15,000-strong museum collection includes unique monuments of Galician iconography and Baroque sculpture, including 5 sculptures by Pinsel; works by the classics of Western Ukrainian painting – Kornil Ustianovych, Ivan Trush, Yaroslav Pstrak, Julian Pankevych, Oleksa Novakivskyi, Osyp Sorokhtei, and Olena Kulchytska; works by Ukrainian artists of the 2nd half of the twentieth century, as well as works by Polish, Austrian, German and Italian masters of the 17th and 19th centuries. The most valuable exhibits of the museum’s collection are on display in the museum’s exhibition hall. It features iconography of the region dating back to the 15th and 19th centuries, baroque plastic works by Johann Gaspar Kohlert, John Georg Pinsel, Matthias Poleiowski, Dionysus Stanetti, paintings by Federico Barocci, Guido Reni, Francesco Trevisani, Michaela Scotti. A significant part of the museum’s collection consists of works of folk art, in particular, artworks by masters of the Hutsul, Pokuttia, Boikivshchyna, and Opillya regions.