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Ghosts may occasionally inhabit the ancient passages of places where history was made long ago but the walls themselves record every occupant’s celebration and frustration keeping secrets for centuries. Livadiya Palace, once the summer home of the last Russian Tsar, Nicolas II and the site of the Yalta Summit in 1945, this palace’s walls could write a history book. Designed as an Italian Renaissance-style building in 1911, the pearl white stone flanked by ornate gardens is a popular destination for travelers and Ukrainians alike.
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Step inside a state-owned Ukrainian museum and you may find yourself in total darkness. Move too quickly through one of the museum exhibit rooms and you may be retrieved like a recalcitrant student by a guide. Museum etiquette is an international language certainly but in Ukraine decorum has as much to do with the state of the country's economy as it does a way of absorbing the art on view.
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Light a single candle. Breathe the cold, damp air. Perhaps say a prayer. Begin your descent into monastic history. Founded in 1057, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra cave labyrinth is merely a small part of a compound of gold-domed churches, iconoclastic art, and one of the oldest monasteries in Eastern Europe.
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Alternately spelled Dneiper, Dnipro, and Dneper, the third longest river in Europe lowing bisects the country of Ukraine and is a study in contrasts, geography, and politics. Often described by its monikers, Right Bank and Left Bank like the River Seine in Paris, this river is considered the birthplace of Ukrainian civilization and the Kievan Rus trade routes. Cossacks first began their independent governments on the river's largest islands and through the centuries, the Dnipro River, (in Ukrainian) is considered the "holy river" of Ukraine.
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This is the third and final article in our series of articles about Ukrainian Festivals. The focus of this feature article is the modern-day "Cultural Festivals of Ukraine". Ukrainian cultural festivals abound and are often celebrated in conjunction with national holidays. Other festivals like the Hutsul Annual International Festival strike at the heart of Ukrainian culture and provide visitors with quite an education. Several thousand Ukrainians celebrate the culture of the Hutsul people living in the Carpathian region at this annual festival.
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In death, Ukrainian ancestors are believed to reside in the fields, orchards, forests, and the skies of their homeland. The spirits assure a good harvest. As a gesture of thanks and to bring good fortune in the coming year, families gather grain from the fields to reside in a corner of the house during the Christmas Eve meal. For Ukrainians death is not simply a cold and lonely end to life. The dead are merely departed. No where is this sentiment more accurately displayed than in Lviv's Lychakivsky Cemetary.
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This is the second article of a three-part series about various Ukraine festivals since the country's independence in 1991. Ukraine.com is proud to present the following article on Film Festivals in Ukraine.
