Radomysl Castle

The building on the Teteriv at Radomyshl began as a paper mill supplying the Kyiv Caves press in the seventeenth century, later became a flour mill and then a ruin, and was rebuilt privately in the 2000s as a museum. What it holds is unusual: some five thousand home icons, painted on wood by village hands rather than by workshops, collected from across Ukraine, along with a concert hall and a chapel. The collection is one of the largest of its kind anywhere.

Background

Olha Bohomolets, a doctor, created the complex in 2007-2011 around an old flour mill built in the late 19th century by the Polish engineer Piekarski. That mill rose on the ruins of a paper mill founded in 1612 on the orders of Yelysei Pletenetskyi (1550-1624), archimandrite of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra; a monument to him was unveiled near the paper mill site on 29 October 2009. The museum grew from the icons Bohomolets has collected since 1996 and now holds more than 5000 icons and sculptures from the 16th to 20th centuries. One icon, probably the oldest, is dated to the 12th century. The concert hall seats 150. Since 2011 the castle has belonged to the Via Regia cultural project.

Source: Wikipedia, "Radomysl Castle"

Highlights

• The home icons - around five thousand village-painted icons on wood.
• The mill building - the rebuilt structure on the river below the dam.
• The chapel - a small church within the complex.
• The Teteriv - the river and weir the mill sits on.

When to go

April to October is the comfortable season. The museum keeps set hours and closes on Mondays. Concerts are held in the hall through the year.

Good to know

The building is a modern reconstruction rather than restored fabric, which some visitors find jarring. The entry price is high by Ukrainian museum standards. Labelling is limited.

Nearby

Zhytomyr is west, and Kyiv is east.

Key facts