Motherland Monument

Walk into the park past Pechersk Lavra and the Park of Eternal Glory and you'll see her long before you reach her. The Motherland Monument stands over the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, and at 102 metres of stainless steel - set another 62 metres above the museum's main building - she's visible from a long way across the city. The statue weighs 560 tons, and the sword and shield she's holding, with the State Emblem of the Soviet Union on the shield, can be picked out from the far bank of the river.

Climbing to the Top

If you're in good health, you can go up inside her to the top of the shield via a ladder in the arm. You can't do it alone - a guide from the museum comes with you and fits you with a safety harness. The views from up there are worth the climb, and it's the main reason to come here rather than just look at her from below.

Be honest with yourself about the ladder before you book. This is a climb, not a lift.

The Statue's History

The original design came from the Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, who modelled the statue on work by the Ukrainian painter Nina Danylenko. Vuchetich had already produced two of the best known Soviet military statues when he came up to the Lavra hills with a party of Communist Party officials in the 1970s looking for a site for a war memorial. He died in 1974 before it was finished, and the story goes that the eyebrows were the only part of his original design to survive. Halyna Kalchenko took the work on, and it finally passed to the sculptor Vasyl Borodai, who gave the statue the shape it has today.

There's an 18 metre section below ground that you'll never see, holding the whole thing up. Museum staff will tell you it would ride out an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale.