Kyiv is one of the oldest and most history-laden cities in Europe: capital of Kyivan Rus more than a thousand years ago, cradle of Slavic Christianisation in 988 and today the capital of a Ukraine fighting for its survival. On the hills above the Dnieper shine the golden domes of St Sophia's Cathedral and the Monastery of the Caves (Pechersk Lavra), both Unesco World Heritage Sites and true marvels of Byzantine-Slavic art. It is also the city of the Maidan, the square where the country's European course was decided in 2013-2014.
Important: since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has been at war and under martial law. For now, Kyiv is not a safe tourist destination: it suffers recurring air-raid alerts and missile and drone attacks, a night-time curfew is in force, and governments, including Argentina's, advise against travel to the country. This guide is informative and cultural: it is meant to help you get to know Kyiv, its heritage and its history with respect, and to plan a visit for the day when security conditions allow it. It does not seek to trivialise a war that is still costing thousands of lives.
With those warnings up front, this guide covers the essential Kyiv: St Sophia's and its square, the Monastery of the Caves, Andriivskyi Descent, the Maidan and Khreshchatyk boulevard, the major museums and the Dnieper riverside. Many prices, opening hours and services are currently affected by the war (some museums and monasteries operate with restrictions), so every detail should be reconfirmed before any future trip.
Kyiv grew up on the hills above the Dnieper and, according to the chronicle, was founded by the brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv. In the 9th and 10th centuries it became the centre of Kyivan Rus, the great East Slavic state. In 988, Prince Volodymyr the Great adopted Byzantine Christianity and baptised his people in the Dnieper, a founding event for East Slavic culture. His son Yaroslav the Wise built St Sophia's Cathedral. The Mongol invasion of 1240 devastated the city, which later passed through Lithuanian, Polish and Russian hands. It was the capital of the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1920), endured the Holodomor, Nazi occupation and the Holocaust (Babyn Yar), and in 1991 became the capital of independent Ukraine. In 2013-2014 it was the stage of the Maidan Revolution, and since 2022 it has been resisting the Russian invasion. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historic heart of Ukraine: Kyiv, the thousand-year-old “mother of Rus' cities” on the Dnieper; the Chernobyl exclusion zone; Uman, the city of Hasidic pilgrims; and Poltava, site of the battle that changed Eastern Europe.
Read the history of Kyiv and the centre →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Few cities carry such a founding weight as Kyiv. Legend has it that the city was founded by three brothers (Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv) and their sister Lybid, on the banks of the Dnieper, and that it took its name from Kyi. Beyond the myth, by the 9th and 10th centuries Kyiv had become the centre of Kievan Rus', the first great state of the Eastern Slavs. Its power stretched across vast plains, and it traded from the Baltic to Constantinople along the 'route from the Varangians to the Greeks'.
The decisive moment came in 988. Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr) the Great, after weighing up different religions according to the chronicle, adopted the Orthodox Christianity of Byzantium and ordered the mass baptism of his people in the waters of the Dnieper. That act, the 'Christianisation of Rus'', tied the Eastern Slavs for good to the Byzantine cultural and religious world. Today Ukrainians and other Slavic peoples alike celebrate it as a founding milestone.
This golden age peaked under his son Yaroslav the Wise (Yaroslav Mudryi) in the 11th century. Kyiv became one of the largest and most brilliant cities in Europe, with hundreds of churches and busy trade. Yaroslav had St Sophia's Cathedral built, modelled on the one in Constantinople. He also issued the first Slavic legal code (the 'Russkaya Pravda') and married his daughters to kings across half of Europe. The 'Nestor Chronicle' (the Tale of Bygone Years), written in Kyiv, is the main source on that world.
The heyday of Kievan Rus' did not last. Feuds between princes broke up the state, and in 1240 the Mongol invasion led by Batu Khan devastated Kyiv. The city was sacked and burned, and much of its population was massacred. It was reduced to a shadow of its former self and for centuries lost its role as a great capital.
In the centuries that followed, Kyiv and the Ukrainian lands came under foreign rule. In the mid-14th century they were absorbed into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, they became part of the vast united kingdom of Poland-Lithuania (the Rzeczpospolita). Under Polish-Lithuanian rule the city regained some of its life, and the Mohyla Academy, founded in the 17th century, made it a centre of Orthodox learning. However, religious and social pressure on the Orthodox population fuelled tensions.
Those tensions gave rise to the Cossack world. On the steppes of the lower Dnieper, the Zaporozhian Sich took shape, a warrior community of free men. In 1648, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky led a great Cossack uprising against Poland that gave birth to a Cossack state (the Hetmanate). In the Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654, Khmelnytsky sought the protection of the Tsar of Moscow. It marked the start of the long and troubled relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and Kyiv and the left bank of the Dnieper would eventually come under Russian rule.
As part of the Russian Empire, Kyiv slowly re-emerged as a major regional city during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 19th century it became an important industrial, commercial and university centre. It had a large Jewish community and a cultural life in which a Ukrainian national awakening was taking root, despite tsarist Russification policies and bans on the Ukrainian language.
The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 opened a window for independence. The Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Kyiv, a short-lived national state that was finally absorbed by Soviet Russia after a brutal civil war and several occupations (German, Bolshevik and Polish). In 1922 Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union, and in 1934 Kyiv became its capital once again.
The 1930s brought one of the greatest tragedies in Ukrainian history: the Holodomor. This famine was caused by the policy of forced collectivisation and the grain requisitions ordered by Stalin in 1932 and 1933, and millions of Ukrainian peasants starved to death. Today Ukraine and many other countries recognise it as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. It was followed by the purges of the Great Terror, which decimated Ukraine's intellectuals and leaders.
The Second World War hit Kyiv extremely hard. In September 1941, after one of the largest encirclement battles in history, Nazi Germany occupied the city. The occupation was devastating. It brought hunger, repression, the deportation of forced labourers and the destruction of large parts of the centre, including the blowing up of the Khreshchatyk.
The most horrific episode took place in the Babi Yar (Babyn Yar) ravine on the outskirts of the city. On 29 and 30 September 1941, the SS and their collaborators shot dead around 33,771 Kyiv Jews in just two days, in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust. In the following months, Babi Yar remained an execution site for Jews, Roma, Soviet prisoners, psychiatric patients and Ukrainian nationalists. In total, an estimated 100,000 people were murdered there.
The Red Army liberated Kyiv in November 1943, after two years of terror, and much of the city lay in ruins. The post-war reconstruction rebuilt the centre in the monumental Stalinist style that still defines the Khreshchatyk and much of the city. For decades the Soviet authorities silenced the memory of Babi Yar, refusing to acknowledge that the massacre had specifically targeted Jews. Only after independence were memorials built that matched the scale of the tragedy.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine declared independence in August 1991, and an overwhelming referendum confirmed it in December. Kyiv became the capital of a sovereign state. The first decades were difficult, shaped by economic transition, corruption and a geopolitical tug-of-war between the West and Russia.
Twice the people of Kyiv took to the streets to decide their country's direction. In 2004, the Orange Revolution filled the Maidan with peaceful protests after a rigged election. In the winter of 2013-2014, the Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan) broke out when the pro-Russian government halted the association agreement with the European Union. Months of demonstrations on Independence Square ended with more than a hundred protesters killed, known as the 'Heavenly Hundred' (Nebesna Sotnia), and with President Yanukovych fleeing the country. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and starting the war in the Donbas in 2014.
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion, and its columns tried to take Kyiv within a few days. The capital held out. After weeks of siege on its outskirts and atrocities in nearby towns such as Bucha and Irpin, the Russian army withdrew from the north in early April 2022. Since then Kyiv has lived under martial law, with a curfew and the constant threat of missiles and drones. Even so, daily life carries on: its museums, its metro (which doubles as a shelter) and its culture keep going, and the city has become a symbol of a whole country's resistance. This guide is offered in that spirit of respect, as a cultural tribute to an ancient city that is defending its very existence today.
