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.

Church of the Ascension, UNESCO

The Yasinya community is rich in cultural and architectural monuments inherited from previous generations. Each monument reflects our heritage, historical past and achievements. The Church of the Ascension is an architectural monument of national importance that was built in 1824.  The iconostasis has been preserved inside the church since its construction. In 2013, the church became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The church consists of five parts of timber-framed walls, with smaller square wings adjoining the larger central part on all sides, cross-shaped parts covered with a gable roof with conical tops at the edges. The central part of the temple turns into an octagon, covered with an octagonal hipped roof, with a tiny tower, with a double helmet. The entire church is wrapped around a wide lower canopy, and the beams protruding from the timbered wall form the supporting consoles. Starting from the level of the canopy, the building is protected from above by vertical shingles. The church’s iconostasis has been repainted, and based on its structural elements, it can be assumed that it was created before the church was built (in the second half of the eighteenth century).

The church is one of the most perfect wooden churches in the entire Hutsul region. There is some magic in the proportions of the side and central parts, in the smoothly hewn logs of the log cabins, in the shingle roofs and in the small lanterns above them.

Folk-park "Hutsul Land"

The Hutsul Land ethno-park on the territory of the Bukovel ski and SPA resort is an original, carefully dismantled and moved wooden huts of the XIX-XX centuries, along with utensils and recreated everyday life, where representatives of various Carpathian ethnic groups lived: Hutsuls, Boyky, Lemky. There is also a skansen, as well as domestic and wild animals, poultry in spacious enclosures, suspension bridges, photo zones and master classes, a Carpathian cinema club, and various attractions.

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.