Vasyl Krychevskyi Poltava Museum of Local Lore
Regional museum in the Poltava Zemstvo House, the first building of Ukrainian Art Nouveau.
The museum was founded in 1891 and is among the oldest in Ukraine; in 2026 it marked its 135th anniversary. Since 1920 it has occupied the former house of the Poltava provincial zemstvo, built between 1903 and 1908 to a design by Vasyl Krychevskyi. The building is usually described as the first work of the Ukrainian Art Nouveau style: Krychevskyi took the steep roofs, trapezoidal windows and tiled ornament of Cossack-era architecture and folk art and reworked them at the scale of a public building.
The house was burnt out in 1943 and rebuilt after the war, and the museum was later named after its architect. Its collections run to several hundred thousand items covering the archaeology, natural history, folk art and modern history of the Poltava region, including ceramics from Opishnia, embroidery and carpets. The restoration now under way was begun before the full-scale invasion and has since been interrupted, so the galleries have stayed shut while the museum works through exhibitions elsewhere and digital projects.
Highlights
- Krychevskyi's Zemstvo House, the first Ukrainian Art Nouveau building
- Majolica tiles and painted ornament on the facades
- Regional collections of folk ceramics, textiles and carpets
- 360-degree video tours published while the building is closed
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