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.

Background

The town lies near the meeting of the Alta and Trubizh rivers in Boryspil Raion, Kyiv Oblast, with an establishment date of 907. In the Middle Ages it was the capital of a principality, and in 992 the grand prince Vladimir I built a large fortress here. Pereiaslav-Ruskyi was a name sometimes used in the 12th and 13th centuries to tell it apart from Pereslavl-Zalessky. Magdeburg rights came in 1585. Named Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi from 1943 to 2019, it took back its historical name in 2019. It covers 32 km² and had about 26,273 people in 2022. With more than 20 museums, it is often called a living museum and holds Historical and Ethnographic Reserve status.

Source: Wikipedia, "Pereiaslav"

What to look for

• 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.

What to expect

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 west along the Dnipro, and Kyiv is northwest.

Key facts