Features

Kyiv’s Golden Gate Metro Station

Deep in the depths of the Zoloti Vorota metro station, today’s harried travelers’ rush through mosaic adorned marble walls and the glow of lit candelabras shine a path on grey granite floors. Centuries ago, however, the epicenter of Kyiv was served by another architectural triumph. The Golden Gates of Kyiv, an impregnable fortress of brick and stone ramparts with a vaulted passageway from which soldiers of the Kyivian Rus kept watch and crowned by a church covered with gilded copper sheets, came to mark the entrance into the ancient city of Kyiv.

Feast of Malanka

Minutes after the sun rises, an insistent knock echoes through a rural Ukrainian house. With heavy eyes and limbs still warm from sleep, a young daughter answers the door to find a crimson clad Devil, a comical faced Gypsy, and a smiling Bear gathered in the winter morning. A fantastical dream fading into early morning? A bizarre prank by the local school children? A team of robbers in costumed disguise? This is not an average winter morning, it is New Year’s Day and the masquerading visitors are characters in the Malanka celebrations.

Ancient Ukrainian Fast Facts

Coins, maps, and medical instruments may have been the inventive purview of the Greeks. Ancient Romans can certainly lay claim to aqueducts, central heating, and elected government. Yet, Ukrainians have their own history of recorded inventions, too. Why not take a moment to peruse a sampling of the ancient discoveries of Ukraine?

Bread Memorialized in Ukrainian Consciousness and Behind Four Walls

Bread itself is an object of reverence and hospitality in Ukraine. Recognized for centuries as the “bread basket of Europe” and victimized by Stalin during the Second World War leaving its citizens without grain to make bread, Ukraine’s devotion to bread has found a home in Kyiv’s National Bread Museum. Moving exhibits in the museum demonstrate the magnitude of bread’s meaning.