Busha

Busha keeps an object nobody has explained: a chamber cut into sandstone with a relief carved on its wall showing a kneeling figure, a stag, a tree and a bird, found in the nineteenth century and dated by different scholars anywhere from pagan antiquity to the Christian middle ages. Around it are a rock-cut monastic complex, the surviving tower of a seventeenth-century castle, and a park of stone sculpture made at symposia held in the village since the 1980s.

What you actually see

• The rock relief - a carved chamber scene of a figure, stag, tree and bird, undated.
• The rock-cut complex - chambers and passages worked into the sandstone.
• The castle tower - the one surviving tower of the seventeenth-century fortress.
• The sculpture park - stone works made on site at open-air symposia.

When to go

April to October is the comfortable season. The reserve keeps set hours and closes on some weekdays. The site is quiet outside summer weekends.

Honest expectations

The relief's date and meaning are genuinely unknown and guides sometimes present one theory as fact. The site is small and takes ninety minutes. Roads in are poor.

Nearby

Lyadova rock monastery is south on the Dniester, and Mohyliv-Podilskyi is southeast.