The Golden-Domed City on the Dnipro — Ukraine's ancient capital holds Europe's oldest surviving mosaic cycle at St Sophia, a cathedral predating Notre-Dame by centuries, a city of chestnut-lined boulevards and extraordinary food culture that has become a symbol of European resilience
Kyiv is the capital and largest city of Ukraine — a city of 2.9 million on the Dnipro River, one of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe and the founding city of Kievan Rus, the medieval empire whose cultural heritage is claimed by both Russia and Ukraine. Kyiv's historic core contains monuments that predate most Western European cathedrals: St Sophia Cathedral (1037, UNESCO World Heritage) has the best-preserved Byzantine mosaic cycle in Europe, a golden apse mosaic of the Virgin Orant watching over the city from a height of 5.45 metres. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (Cave Monastery, also UNESCO, f…
Kyiv was founded by the Varangian (Norse) and Slavic peoples in the 5th–6th centuries and became the capital of Kievan Rus under Prince Oleg in 882. At its 11th-century peak under Yaroslav the Wise, Kyiv was one of the largest cities in Europe — a centre of Christianity, literacy (the Cyrillic alphabet was propagated from here), and trade on the river routes between Scandinavia and Byzantium. The Mongol invasion of 1240 destroyed most of the city and ended Kievan Rus as a political entity. Kyiv subsequently fell under Lithuanian, Polish, Cossack, and ultimately Russian imperial control before…