National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War

Head for the Motherland Monument and you'll find the museum directly underneath her, built into the hills on the right bank of the Dnipro in the Pechersk district. You'll still find it signposted and mapped as the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet-era name it carried until 2015, so don't be thrown if that's what you're looking for.

Check the day before you go. Like most museums in Ukraine it closes on Mondays.

What's Inside

There are 18 galleries and over 300 exhibits, which makes this one of the best stocked museums in the country. You'll come in past tanks, aircraft and other military equipment, and the artefacts inside are backed by video and by detailed descriptions of what each piece was for and why it mattered.

The Motherland Monument above is part of the museum and its best known feature: 102 metres of stainless steel holding a sword and shield, in a socialist realist style that could hardly be less like the golden cupolas of Pechersk Lavra next door. The Soviet emblem came off her shield in August 2023 and a Ukrainian trident went up in its place, so she no longer matches the photographs in most guidebooks. You'll hear stories locally questioning whether she was built correctly and whether she might come down. Nothing of the sort has ever happened.

Worth Knowing Before You Go

This is a national museum of a war that Ukraine is still living with, not a display of hardware. For Ukrainians the exhibits are personal, and you may well find yourself alongside people for whom this is family history rather than a day out. It's a quieter, heavier visit than the tanks at the entrance suggest.

The museum was founded in 1981 by the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and moved twice before settling here. It was given national status in 1996 by the then president Leonid Kuchma.

Market Plaza and La Coupole are both nearby if you want somewhere to sit down afterwards.