Ukraine’s rich cultural, religious and artistic heritage is under threat from increased Russian bombardment.
Seven Ukrainian sites are listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, which has called for their protection.
Hagia Sophia
Saint Sophia Cathedral is the most iconic building in kyiv, with its characteristic golden domes, mosaics and icons.
It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1990.
The Cave Monastery (Pechersk Lavra) and the Berestove Church of the Savior are also under UN protection.
Hagia Sophia was originally built in the 11th century, but was rebuilt in the Baroque style in the 18th century.
The cathedral has a strong symbolic content, not only for Ukrainians but for the entire Slavic Orthodox world.
It was designed to rival the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul), and embodies the birth of both modern Ukraine and modern Russia.
The cathedral was erected to celebrate the evangelization of the region after the Byzantines baptized their saint, King Vladimir Svyatoslavich the Great, in 988.
The historic center of Lviv
The historic center of Lviv, a city of 700,000 inhabitants in western Ukraine, entered the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.
Its urban layout remains “practically intact” since the Middle Ages, when it was called Lemberg.
The Baroque period altered the appearance of the neighborhood, but there are still numerous testimonies of its motley mix of cultures and confessions.
A monumental religious center, the Residence of the Metropolitans of Bukovina and Dalmatia, in the city of Chernivtsi, is also listed by UNESCO.
wooden churches
The imposing wooden churches (tserkvas) located in the Carpathians are also protected by UNESCO.
Eight are located in the Ukraine, and the same number across the border in Poland.
Another place in the repertoire of sites to be preserved is the Struve Geodetic Arch, a series of 34 landmarks for geodetic calculations, between Norway and the Black Sea, a part of which is located in the Ukraine.
Carpathian beech forests
The primary beech forests of the Carpathians preserve the last vestiges of the first temperate forests that covered much of the European continent in ancient times.
In Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, are the remains of the ancient city of Chersonesus, a colony founded by the Greeks in the 5th century BC, on the shores of the Black Sea.
Ukraine has applied for Unesco protection for another 17 sites, including the historic center of Odessa, also on the shores of the Black Sea, dating from the 19th century, as well as the medieval historic center of Chernigiv, some 150 km north of kyiv under heavy Russian bombardment.
