Lviv. The Zankovetska Theatre. 'Christmas Night'

The magical Christmas night is wrapped in prophecies and bound up with traditions that are lovingly kept to this day. In the evening, with the first star, costumed carollers come to the houses with wishes of goodness and prosperity, while grateful hosts wait for them and generously treat the participants of the festive rite to sweets. The whole family gathers at the festive table, on which there are 12 dishes of Ukrainian cuisine. On the good festive days everyone waits for gifts and for wishes to come true. For many years now, ahead of the beloved and long-awaited holidays, the Maria Zankovetska National Academic Drama Theatre in Lviv has been giving a true wonder — a production for collective, individual and family viewing, "Christmas Night".

 

Lviv. The Maria Zankovetska National Academic Drama Theatre

Mykulychyn. Holy Trinity Church and Bell-Tower Museum

It conforms to the canons of wooden Hutsul sacred buildings, it has kept a refined interior, its parishioners preserved the shrine through the years of wartime calamity and Bolshevik atheism, restored it after a flood and created a museum. The Church of the Holy Trinity in Mykulychyn, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, has been granted the status of an architectural monument of national significance.

 

Mykulychyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region. The Church of the Holy Trinity. 1868. UGCC

Lviv. The Solomiia Krushelnytska Museum

In 2022 it was 150 years since the birth and 70 years since the death of the great Ukrainian Solomiia Krushelnytska. She was called the Wagnerian prima donna, the most enchanting Butterfly, the ideal singer. In her lifetime she was recognised as the most outstanding opera performer in the world for her acting talent, her consummate performing art and her inborn beauty. She performed demanding parts in eight languages, but considered Ukrainian her mother tongue. Into the programme of her concerts Solomiia always included Ukrainian folk songs. Her lyric-dramatic soprano accompanies the tour of the music and memorial museum, housed in Lviv in the flat where, from 1903 to 1952, this outstanding opera singer of the 20th century lived.

Lviv. The Solomiia Krushelnytska Music and Memorial Museum

The Yablunytsia Pass. A Picturesque Carpathian Crossing

The Yablunytsia Pass lies in the Eastern Carpathians, on the border of the Transcarpathian and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. In the Middle Ages trade routes ran through the pass, and it was called the Tatar Pass, because as far back as the thirteenth century the Mongol-Tatar horde moved through this very place on its way to Europe. Its present-day name this geographic feature received from its location on the south-western outskirts of the village of Yablunytsia, in the Nadvirna district of the Ivano-Frankivsk region.

 

The Yablunytsia Pass

Lviv. Stryiskyi Park. To walk and walk

There are many reasons to love Lviv, and one of them is the abundance of parks and gardens in this overcrowded city, congested with traffic. Stryiskyi Park, the oldest park in Ukraine to hold the status of a monument of landscape-garden art of national significance, is considered by Lvivians and visitors alike a favourite place of rest — for its shady avenues, its romantic ponds with swans and little ducks, its sculptural fountains, its architectural gems, its attractions and its sports facilities.

Lviv. Stryiskyi Park

Rakhiv. A Staging Point for Tourists. To Go or Not?

Rakhiv is the highest-lying town in Ukraine and a town situated near one of the geographic centres of Europe. Lovers of mountain ascents come here to conquer the Ukrainian two-thousanders and the other summits of the mighty Carpathians. What can one see in Rakhiv, making an intermediate stop in the course of transit tourism?

 

Rakhiv, Transcarpathian region

Mykulychyn. The Narrow-Gauge Carriage Museum

Driving along the H09 highway Mukachevo-Ivano-Frankivsk-Lviv, in the centre of Mykulychyn the traveller will surely notice an old little carriage at the roadside and wonder why a railway rarity has been placed here.

 

Mykulychyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region. The narrow-gauge carriage museum

Lviv. Autumn at the Shevchenkivskyi Hai Open-Air Museum

The Klymentiy Sheptytskyi Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life in Lviv is a treasury of wooden-architecture landmarks and a place you want to return to. One or two visits are not enough to examine every exhibit in detail, and a walk here in the autumn season heightens the impression: paired with the golden magic of the season, it lets you hear your own thoughts, rest from the city's troubles and revel in the beauty of nature.

 

Lviv. Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life. Church of Sts. Olha and Volodymyr

Lviv. The Children's Railway Through Stryiskyi Park

For Railwayman's Day

and the anniversary of the opening of the Lviv Children's Railway

One of the most beloved recreation spots in Lviv, and a true fairy tale, is the children's railway in Stryiskyi Park.

Lviv. The children's railway in Stryiskyi Park

Morshyn. From Pump Room to Pump Room. A Health Walk

Morshyn begins with the mineral-water pump room, around which all the roads, avenues and paths converge. It can serve healing water to 6 thousand people at once.

 

Morshyn. The pump room