Pereiaslav

Pereiaslav is an old town of Kyivan Rus that has become, improbably, a town of museums: more than two dozen of them, from an open-air skansen of relocated wooden buildings to single-subject collections of beekeeping, bread, folk costume, land transport, space exploration and the local writer Sholem Aleichem, who was born here. The concentration came from one energetic director in the Soviet period and has survived since.

What you actually see

• The skansen - relocated wooden churches, houses and mills in an open-air museum.
• The single-subject museums - beekeeping, bread, costume and transport, each with a building.
• The Sholem Aleichem museum - the writer's connection to the town.
• The Rus history - the town's origins as a major centre of Kyivan Rus.

When to go

May to October is the season and the open-air museum is fully open then. Many museums close on Mondays. Winter cuts the open-air collection back.

Honest expectations

The museums vary enormously in quality and several are very small. Labelling is in Ukrainian throughout. Covering more than a handful in a day is not realistic.

Nearby

Trypillia is north along the Dnipro, and Kyiv is northwest.