National Museum of Ukrainian History

+38(044) 2786545
Vladimirskaya St. 2
www.nmiu.com.ua

The National Museum of Ukrainian History, located in the Kyiv's historical center, on the Starokyivskaya Mount, is reckoned among the most interesting and the most attended ones in the Ukraine's capital. It is considered to be one of the country's principal museums considering the volume and value of its funds. It is the true treasury of the unique historical and cultural relicts of Ukrainian people and the peculiar trademark of the independent Ukraine.

Museum's history started in 1899, when the City Museum of Antiques and Arts (modern National Art Museum of Ukraine) hosted the archeological exhibition, whose exhibits later became the base for collection of the historical museum, opened in 1904. Initially very modest museum funds were enlarged through collections that belonged to its founders, prominent metropolitan archeologists. Later it was supported by the famous Kyivan sponsors and benefactors, who not only donated valuables from their private collections to the museum, but also funded archeological expeditions, contributing to the formation of its unique historical and ethnographic collections.

Five years later the historical museum passed to the state care. Later it has changed its location too. First, the exposition was moved to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra territory, which was transformed into museum town at that time. And after the World War II, the National Museum of Ukrainian History was moved in the building of the former art school on the Starokyivskaya Mount, where it is still situated.

Today the historical museum's funds number over 800 thousand unique monuments of history and culture. They include very valuable archeological, ethnographic and numismatic collections, a collection of weapons and firearms, glass- and chinaware, unique items of decorative and applied arts, manuscripts. It also keeps the most interesting works of painting, graphics and sculpture, books published in Russia before the 18th century and a collection of important historical documents from the Cossacks time to the present day.

Historical museum's vast and varied exposition that is introduced by 15 different exhibitions allows tracing back the major milestones in the development of Ukrainian society and state. Its halls introduce material evidence of Trypillya culture, artifacts from Kyivan Rus times and other historical eras, including exhibits telling about the latest developments in the independent Ukraine.

No less interesting is the branch of the National Museum of History, the Museum of Ukraine's Historical Treasures, located in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. It houses one of the largest collections of golden items and precious stones in the CIS territory.

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