Nizhyn

Nizhyn cucumbers have been a byword in Ukraine and beyond for two centuries, pickled with dill, horseradish, garlic and blackcurrant leaf, and the town has a monument to them. Its other history is trade: a Greek merchant colony settled here in the seventeenth century and built its own churches, and the Nizhyn Lyceum, founded in 1820, taught Gogol among others and stands as a long neoclassical block with a colonnade, still in use as a university and still the largest building in the town.

Background

Records first mention the site in 1147, under the name Unenezh. In 1625 the town received Magdeburg rights, which made it self-governing. Set where trade routes crossed, Nizhyn was one of the largest trading centres of Left-bank Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries, and its fairs on Pokrova Day were the biggest of their kind in the region. The local Greeks formed their own brotherhood in 1687. The former Bezborodko Lyceum is now Nizhyn Gogol State University, and its graduates include Yevhen Hrebinka as well as Gogol, whose statue stands on one of the streets. The city lies on the Oster River, 116 kilometres north-east of Kyiv, and had 65,830 residents in 2022.

Source: Wikipedia, "Nizhyn"

The main sights

• The cucumber monument - a bronze cucumber on a barrel, the town's emblem.
• The lyceum - the 1820 neoclassical college where Gogol studied.
• The Greek churches - buildings of the seventeenth-century merchant colony.
• The market - where the pickles are actually sold, in season.

When to go

April to October is the comfortable season. Cucumber season runs through the summer and the market is best then. Museums close on Mondays.

Good to know

Much of what is sold as Nizhyn pickle is made elsewhere; the variety and the method travelled. The town is workaday outside the lyceum quarter. Museums are small.

Nearby

Chernihiv is northwest, and Kyiv is southwest.

Key facts