Our June field trip to Ukraine began with a night arrival to its capital city Kiev. The first day was mainly devoted to visiting some of the local museums. First, we have visited the Khanenko Museum of Arts. The pleasant, almost homely atmosphere of this museum, which originally contained a private art collection of the Khanenko family, revealed a number of rooms with artifacts from different historical periods. However, our main focus was laid on several fascinating icons originally preserved in Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai and mostly dated to the 6th and 7th centuries. In the afternoon we went on our tour, visiting the Museum of Russian Art, where we unfortunately did not find what we had expected and we did not have much time to explore the local expositions either, because the museum was just about to close – earlier than it should close normally due to some protests. Nevertheless, we had the opportunity to see several Russian icons.
The next night we spent in an overnight train heading to Odessa. A chattering train, four single beds in each compartment, a Persian carpet in the corridor, and black tea in a tin cup in the morning. The poetics of this journey was indescribable. After a hard night on the train, we had a premium breakfast – caviar and champagne. While eating on the benches in front of the local market, we at least had the opportunity to appreciate the local atmosphere. We did not have a busy program here, most of the time we walked through the wide streets of Odessa, admiring the local architecture and the abundant architectural bizarre, which very unusually complements the panorama of the city. Later on, we also visited the Museum of Archeology with various ancient finds and since Odessa is a seaside town, we could not resist the temptation of a short bath. At the end of the day we boarded again the train back to the capital.
The following day we experienced the highlight of the whole field trip. The Saint Sofia’s Cathedral from the 11th century. Behind the “new” facade from the 17th century, there was a Byzantine treasure. Walls covered with mosaics and mural paintings were worthy of admiration for hours. Then we visited the Cathedral of Saint Michael, who, unlike Saint Sofia, does not only function as a museum, but still serves as a space for liturgy. We just saw the end of a ceremony when we reached the temple. Saint Michael was especially interesting because the church was razed to the ground in 1930s and rebuilt as the exact copy of the original after the declaration of Ukraine’s independency in 1991.
Further, we took a walk to the Cathedral of Saint Cyril on the outskirts of the city. The interior of the temple was covered with beautiful murals from different periods, some original, some restored and copying the original model, some created without any efforts to follow the original concepts, such as paintings by Michael Vrubel from the 19th century. The whole space thus became a kind of a historical excursion to the ancient and less distant times, pointing out the various concepts of space restoration.
Then we took a tour in the Ukrainian National Museum, which on several floors summarized the history of this nation from Antiquity to the 20th century. Again, we focused mainly on the Middle Ages, but it was very interesting to consider this museum in a broader perspective. The concept of the exhibition curiously points out the Ukrainian efforts to construct its – unfortunately partially non-existent – history…
At the end of the day we visited one of Kiev’s pubs, which made a nice conclusion to the field trip.
