Mezhyhirya Residence

Marshrutkas wait at Heroiv Dnipra metro station and run direct, which makes this an easy half day out of the city. Mezhyhirya was the private residence of Viktor Yanukovych, first as prime minister and then as president, and since 2014 it's been open as a museum with his belongings left where they were.

The scale is the thing nobody is prepared for. The estate covers 140 hectares on the banks of the Dnipro. Monaco covers 195, with over 30,000 residents. This had one.

What's on the Estate

There are tennis courts, a golf course, a shooting range, kennels, fountains, a small church and a helipad. The car museum is the highlight for most people, a collection of vehicles from Yanukovych's time in office.

Inside the house, the detail people remember is the wooden panelling on the staircases, valued at over 200,000 dollars, and the chandelier. There are statues throughout, put there to underline the importance of the building and its owner.

The main house is a five storey palace of logs and stone. Everything built here under the Soviets was demolished to make room for it.

Budget a couple of hours, and note that feeding the ducks at the pond costs extra, which is the kind of detail that tells you a lot about the place.

How It Ended Up Like This

It started as a monastery, opening and closing repeatedly over the years until the Bolsheviks shut it for good in 1923 after the founding of the Soviet Union. From 1935 it was a government residence, first for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and then for independent Ukraine, until it passed into private hands in 2007 with the State Administration of Affairs renting space from an association called Tantalite. Two years later it was returned to state ownership.

Both the interior and the grounds are well preserved, which is the point - this is a museum of how the money was spent. It's the same sort of day out as Chernobyl in that respect: you go to see what a system left behind rather than what it built.

Bistro Pekarya nearby does Italian-European grill if you want feeding afterwards.