Chernivtsi is one of Ukraine's most elegant and surprising cities, the historic capital of Bukovina, a region at the crossroads of different worlds. For more than a century it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the name Czernowitz. From that period it inherited a historic centre of refined Viennese architecture, cobbled streets, cafés and a Central European atmosphere. These earned it the nickname 'little Vienna', and its once vibrant mix of peoples and religions even made it 'Jerusalem on the Prut'. Its crown jewel is the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans, a lavish 19th-century complex that now houses the university and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Important: since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has been at war and under martial law. Chernivtsi, in the country's far south-west, is one of the calmest cities and among the least affected by the war, but for now it is not a fully safe tourist destination. Air alerts and a night-time curfew are in force, and governments, including Argentina's, advise against travel to Ukraine. This guide is informative and cultural. It is meant to help you get to know Chernivtsi and plan a visit for when security conditions allow, without trivialising an ongoing war.
With those warnings in mind, this guide covers the essential Chernivtsi: the Residence of the Metropolitans, the Austro-Hungarian historic centre, pedestrian Kobylianska Street, the churches of different rites, the memory of its rich Jewish heritage and the unmistakable Central European café feel. Many prices, opening hours and services are currently affected by the war, so every detail should be reconfirmed before any future trip.
Chernivtsi is first mentioned in the 15th century, in the lands of the Principality of Moldavia. In 1775 the region of Bukovina passed to the Habsburg Empire, and Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) became its capital. It grew into a brilliant Austro-Hungarian city, cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, home to Ukrainians, Romanians, Germans, Jews, Poles and Armenians. It was a major cultural centre: the poet Paul Celan was born here, and Jewish life flourished. After the First World War it passed to Romania. After the Second World War, with the Holocaust that devastated its Jewish community and the deportations, it became part of Soviet Ukraine. Its great monument, the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans, designed by the architect Josef Hlávka (1864-1882), is now the university and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011. Since 1991 the city has been part of independent Ukraine. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The most Central European side of Ukraine: Lviv in Habsburg Galicia, the “Piedmont” of the national awakening; elegant Chernivtsi in Bukovina; the Hutsul villages of the Carpathians; Uzhhorod in Transcarpathia; and the great fortresses of Kamianets-Podilskyi and Khotyn.
Read the history of The west (Lviv, Chernivtsi, Carpathians) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Chernivtsi began as a modest frontier settlement in the region of Bukovina, a land of gentle hills and beech forests (hence its name, from the Slavic 'buk', beech), at a crossroads of peoples and powers. The first documentary mentions of the town date from the 15th century, when the area was part of the Principality of Moldavia, a state that swung between the orbits of Poland, Hungary and the rising Ottoman Empire.
According to the most widely held interpretation, the town's name comes from an old fortress and a customs post on the banks of the Prut River, where trade routes crossed. For centuries Chernivtsi was a place of passage and exchange, home to Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Moldavians (Romanians) and, in time, other communities drawn by trade. Being on the frontier left it exposed to the wars between Moldavia, Poland and the Ottomans, and kept it a small town, without the brilliance it would later reach.
Under Ottoman sovereignty, exercised through the vassal Principality of Moldavia, the Bukovina region stayed relatively modest for generations. Everything would change radically at the end of the 18th century, when the fate of this land became bound to one of Europe's great empires: that of the Habsburgs.
In 1775, amid the territorial reshuffles of the period, the Habsburg Empire acquired the Bukovina region, which until then had been under Ottoman-Moldavian rule. It was a decisive annexation. Under the German name Czernowitz, the town became the administrative capital of the new Austrian province and began a spectacular transformation that would take it from frontier village to dazzling Central European city.
Under Vienna's rule, and above all in the 19th century, Czernowitz flourished. The imperial administration gave it an orderly street plan, public buildings, theatres, schools and a university. It filled up with elegant architecture (Neoclassical, historicist, then Art Nouveau), with cafés and with a vibrant cultural life. But what stood out most was its people: the city became an extraordinary mosaic of peoples and religions, where Ukrainians (Ruthenians), Romanians, Germans, Jews, Poles, Armenians and others lived side by side, each with their own institutions, churches and language.
That coexistence, helped by the empire's relative tolerance, made Czernowitz an admired example of cosmopolitanism. German was the shared language of culture, but half a dozen languages could be heard in the streets. The city earned nicknames such as 'Little Vienna' for its elegance and 'Jerusalem on the Prut' for the importance of its Jewish community. It was one of the cultural jewels of the eastern Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The ultimate symbol of Czernowitz's golden age is the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans. Between 1864 and 1882, the Czech architect Josef Hlávka built this lavish complex as the seat of the Orthodox metropolitans of Bukovina, at a time when the local Orthodox Church enjoyed great prestige and autonomy within the Catholic Habsburg empire. With its bold blend of Byzantine, Romanesque and Moorish styles and its polychrome tiled roofs, the building is one of the masterpieces of 19th-century architecture in Central Europe.
The Residence expressed Bukovina's unusual situation: a Catholic empire funding and honouring the Orthodox Church of one of its provinces, an example of the religious tolerance that defined this region. Today the complex houses Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011.
The city's cultural life also had a powerful Jewish dimension. The Jewish community of Czernowitz was one of the most educated and active in Central Europe, at the heart of its economic, intellectual and artistic life. In 1908 the city hosted the historic Yiddish Language Conference. And from that milieu came a constellation of writers and artists, among them Paul Celan, born in the city in 1920, author of some of the most profound German-language poetry of the 20th century and, in his own life, a witness to the tragedy that was coming.
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War, in 1918, changed the city's fate once again. Bukovina was incorporated into the Kingdom of Romania, and Czernowitz was renamed Cernăuți, becoming an important city in northern Romania. The population was still a mosaic of nationalities, though now under a Romanian administration that pushed 'Romanianisation' policies.
In the interwar years the city kept much of its cultural brilliance and cosmopolitan life, with its university, its cafés, its press in several languages and its thriving Jewish, Ukrainian and German life. It was a period of some continuity with the Austrian heyday, but also of growing national tensions in a Europe sliding towards authoritarianism and conflict.
The shadow falling over the continent in the 1930s (the rise of fascism and antisemitism) foretold dark times for a city whose wealth came precisely from its diversity. The 1939 pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with its secret clauses on carving up Eastern Europe, would soon seal a brutal turn in Chernivtsi's history.
In 1940, under the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviet Union occupied northern Bukovina and Chernivtsi, which was made part of Soviet Ukraine for the first time. That first Soviet occupation brought repression, arrests and deportations. Shortly afterwards, in 1941, with the German invasion of the USSR, the city came under the control of Romania, an Axis ally, and the most tragic chapter in its history began.
Chernivtsi's large Jewish community, one of the souls of the city, was persecuted, stripped of its property and confined to a ghetto. Thousands of Jews from the city and from Bukovina were deported to the death camps of Transnistria, where many died. The destruction was immense, although part of the community survived thanks, among other things, to the courage of the Romanian mayor Traian Popovici, who managed to exempt thousands of Jews from deportation and would later be recognised as 'Righteous Among the Nations'. Even so, the vibrant Jewish life of the 'Jerusalem on the Prut' was destroyed forever. The poet Paul Celan lost his parents in that horror.
With the Soviet victory in 1944, Chernivtsi was permanently reincorporated into Soviet Ukraine. The post-war years saw most of the German, Romanian and Polish communities and the surviving Jews leave, and the city turned into a Soviet city with a Ukrainian majority. In 1955 the former Residence of the Metropolitans was handed over to the city's university, which preserved that architectural gem, though with a new use.
With Ukraine's independence in 1991, Chernivtsi became fully part of the new state as the capital of Chernivtsi Oblast (province) and the main city of Ukrainian Bukovina. Freed from the Soviet straitjacket, it was able to rediscover and value its extraordinary Austro-Hungarian and multicultural heritage, and to focus on preserving its historic centre and its monuments.
This recognition peaked in 2011, when UNESCO added the Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans to the World Heritage List, giving international standing to Josef Hlávka's great work and, with it, to the city's cultural legacy. Chernivtsi established itself as one of the most appealing destinations in western Ukraine, known for its architecture, its Central European café atmosphere, its university and the living memory of its cosmopolitan past, including figures such as Paul Celan.
The full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022 also reached this region, though less severely. Located in the far south-west of the country, far from the front line and close to the Romanian and Moldovan borders, Chernivtsi is one of the calmest and safest cities in Ukraine and, like Lviv, became a refuge for displaced people. Even so, it lives under martial law, with air-raid alerts and a curfew, and is not completely safe from the war. This guide is offered with respect for that reality: as a cultural tribute to one of the most remarkable cities in Europe, witness to centuries of coexistence and tragedy, which today is part of a Ukraine defending its existence and its place in Europe.
