Chernivtsi University

Built in the 1860s-70s as the residence of Bukovina's Orthodox Metropolitans, Chernivtsi's university ensemble is Habsburg eclecticism at full confidence: Czech architect Josef Hlavka mixed Byzantine, Moorish and Romanesque into brick courts, a seminary church and ceremonial halls under roofs of glazed geometric tile - a composition UNESCO inscribed as a masterwork of historicist architecture. Students now fill the courts, tours open the Marble and Red halls' painted splendour, and the surrounding city - Habsburg Czernowitz's cafes and facades - extends the visit into one of Ukraine's most elegant urban days.

History

Austria took Bukovina in 1775 and settled German colonists there, and as graduates of its German-language schools still had to leave the province to study, a committee led by the jurist Constantin Tomashchuk pressed for a university in multilingual Czernowitz; the Imperial Council approved it in March 1875. The Franz-Josephs-Universität opened on 4 October 1875, a hundred years after Bukovina joined the Habsburg monarchy. Today the university is housed in the former Residence of the Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans, a World Heritage Site since 2011 (Wikipedia, Chernivtsi University).

What's there

• The tiled roofs - glazed geometry over the brick courts.
• The ceremonial halls - Marble and Red rooms in painted splendour.
• The seminary church - the ensemble's Byzantine-Moorish heart.
• Habsburg Chernivtsi - the cafe city around the campus.

When to go

May to September for courtyard light and city strolling; academic terms animate the courts.

Good to know

Interior access runs on tour schedules; the roofscape photographs best from the garden side in afternoon light.

Nearby

Chernivtsi's old centre and the Bukovina hills.

Key facts