A sober and essential warning: Kharkiv is today one of the cities most affected by the war. Located just a few dozen kilometres from the Russian border, since 2022 it has suffered heavy shelling and attacks with many civilian casualties and enormous material damage, and it remains under constant threat. It is not a tourist destination, and travelling there is dangerous. This guide is strictly informative and cultural: it is meant to help you understand the city, its history and its heritage with respect, not to encourage you to visit.
With that warning up front, Kharkiv deserves to be understood. It is Ukraine's second city, the great metropolis of the north-east, a university, scientific and industrial powerhouse. It was the first capital of Soviet Ukraine, from 1919 to 1934, and from that period it inherits its most distinctive urban feature: huge squares and monumental constructivist buildings, such as the famous Derzhprom, one of the first skyscrapers in the Soviet Union. It is also a city of old churches, parks, theatres and a lively student and cultural scene.
This guide covers Kharkiv's heritage: Freedom Square and the Derzhprom, the cathedrals of the old centre, the Mirror Stream, the large parks and the museums, along with their historical context. It includes practical information —currency, transport, the role of the metro— to help you understand the city. All of it, we stress soberly, as informative and cultural material about a city that is living through war today, not as a travel suggestion.
Kharkiv was founded in the mid-17th century as a Cossack fortress on the southern frontier of the Russian state, in the historical region of Sloboda Ukraine (Slobozhanshchyna). It grew as a centre of trade and fairs, and in the 19th century it became a large industrial and university city: its university, founded in 1804, was one of the first in the empire. After the Russian Revolution, Kharkiv was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, from 1919 to 1934, and in those years its monumental square and the Derzhprom building, a landmark of constructivism, were built. It suffered terribly in the Second World War, with fierce battles and occupation, and was reborn after the war as a Soviet industrial and scientific powerhouse. Since 1991 it has been the second city of independent Ukraine. In the war that began in 2022 it has been one of the cities hit hardest by the bombardments. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Industrial, steppe Ukraine: Kharkiv, first capital of Soviet Ukraine and city of the “Executed Renaissance”; and Dnipro, Catherine's former Yekaterinoslav, a metallurgical heartland and cradle of the space industry.
Read the history of The east (Kharkiv, Dnipro) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Kharkiv began as an outpost in no man's land. In the mid-17th century, the vast region of steppe and forest in what is now north-eastern Ukraine, known as Slobozhanshchyna, was a dangerous and sparsely populated frontier, exposed to raids by the Crimean Tatars. To settle and defend it, Ukrainian Cossack settlers fleeing war and oppression west of the Dnieper moved into the area under the protection of the Russian state, which granted them land and freedoms (hence the name 'Sloboda', a free settlement).
Around 1654 (the traditional date), these settlers founded a fortified settlement on the banks of the Kharkiv and Lopan rivers, and the city grew from it. A wooden fortress was built to protect them from attacks, and around it grew a community of Cossacks and peasants who combined farming with military defence. The city takes its name from the Kharkiv River, although some legends credit a legendary Cossack called Kharko.
Over the following decades, Kharkiv established itself as the administrative centre of one of the Cossack regiments of Slobozhanshchyna and as a place for fairs and trade. Its position on the routes between the heart of Russia and the southern lands gradually turned it into an increasingly important trading hub on the empire's frontier.
The 19th century turned Kharkiv from a frontier town into one of the great cities of the southern Russian Empire. A decisive milestone was the founding of Kharkiv University in 1804, one of the first universities in the empire, championed by the scholar Vasyl Karazin. The university made the city a major centre of learning, science and culture, and a focus of Ukrainian intellectual life and the awakening of national consciousness, with figures linked to Romanticism and to the study of the Ukrainian language and folklore.
At the same time, Kharkiv grew as a centre of trade fairs (its fairs drew merchants from across the region) and, with the arrival of the railway in the second half of the century, as a transport hub and industrial powerhouse. Factories, metalworking and machinery plants sprang up, and the city filled with a new working class. By the early 20th century, Kharkiv was already one of the most industrialised and dynamic cities in Ukraine, with a fast-growing population.
That dual character, a city of knowledge and a city of industry, would define Kharkiv's identity throughout the following century and explains its weight as a scientific and manufacturing capital.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the civil war, Kharkiv entered its most remarkable period. When Bolshevik power took hold in Ukraine, the city was chosen as the capital of the newly created Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a status it kept from 1919 to 1934. For fifteen years Kharkiv, not Kyiv, was the political centre of Soviet Ukraine, which gave it an extraordinary boost.
As capital, the city underwent an ambitious urban transformation in line with the ideals of the Soviet avant-garde. The huge Dzerzhinsky Square (today Freedom Square), one of the largest in Europe, was laid out, and monumental Constructivist buildings rose around it. The jewel was the Derzhprom (State Industry Building), built in 1925-1928: a colossal reinforced-concrete and glass complex of 13 storeys and about 68 metres high, considered the first 'skyscraper' in the Soviet Union and a masterpiece of world Constructivism. Kharkiv became a laboratory for the new architecture and the new socialist urban planning.
These were also years of intense Ukrainian cultural life, with a flowering of literature, theatre and the arts later known as the 'Executed Renaissance', because many of its leading figures would be persecuted and executed in Stalin's purges of the 1930s. In 1934 the capital of Soviet Ukraine moved to Kyiv, but Kharkiv kept its huge industrial and scientific weight. Shortly before, the city and its region had suffered, like all of Ukraine, the Holodomor, the great famine caused by Soviet policies in 1932-1933.
Few European cities suffered as much in the Second World War as Kharkiv. Because of its industrial importance and strategic position, the city was one of the main targets on the Eastern Front and changed hands several times in devastating fighting. Kharkiv was the scene of four major battles between 1941 and 1943, some of the bloodiest of the entire war.
German forces first occupied the city in October 1941. A brutal occupation followed: executions, hunger (the winter of 1941-1942 brought terrible loss of life among the population) and the extermination of Kharkiv's Jewish community, thousands of whose members were murdered in massacres such as the one at Drobytsky Yar, on the outskirts of the city. This is a memory that must be named precisely and without euphemism.
The city was retaken by the Red Army, lost again and finally liberated for good in August 1943, after the Battle of Kursk. By then Kharkiv lay largely in ruins and had lost a huge share of its population to death, flight and deportation. Post-war reconstruction would be an immense task.
After the war, Kharkiv rose from its ruins and once again became one of the great industrial and scientific powerhouses of the Soviet Union. The square, the buildings and the factories were rebuilt, and the city specialised in heavy and high-tech industries: tanks and machinery, aviation, turbines, electronics, and nuclear and space research. Its network of universities and institutes made it one of the country's largest student centres. Those years also produced much-loved symbols such as the Mirror Stream (1947), a small monument to the city's rebirth.
With Ukraine's independence in 1991, Kharkiv became the second city of the new state and kept its role as a major industrial, technological and university centre in the north-east. A city with a mixed population, where Russian is widely spoken alongside Ukrainian, it kept its own identity and its energy.
Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 hit Kharkiv especially hard. Because it lies close to the border (just a few dozen kilometres away), the city was one of the first and main targets: it suffered heavy shelling and fighting on its outskirts, with many civilian casualties and enormous destruction of homes, infrastructure and historic buildings. Many residents sheltered for weeks in metro stations. After Russia withdrew from much of the region in 2022, Kharkiv has remained under regular missile and drone attacks. With all due sobriety and respect for what its people are going through: Kharkiv today is a city at war, not a tourist destination. Its heritage (the square, the Derzhprom, its churches and parks) endures, partly damaged, waiting, like all of Ukraine, for peaceful times.
