Lendmarks of World Heritage List in Ukraine

Kiev: Saint-Sophia Cathedral and Related Monastic Buildings

Designed to rival Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Kiev`s Saint-Sophia Cathedral symbolizes the «new Constantinople», capital of the Christian principality of Kiev, which was created in the 11 th century in a region evangelized after the baptism of St Vladimir in 988.

Kiev-Pechersk Lavra

Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is situated on a hill overlooking the Dnipro River. Founded in 1051 by monks, its spectacular structures were added on over the years in classical, Byzantine and Ukrainian Baroque styles. This functioning monastery consists of numerous churches, towers and miles of underground tunnels (cavels) with ancient crypts and eccelesiastical objects.

L`viv the Ensemble of the Historic Centre

The city of L`viv, founded in the late Middle Ages, was a flourishing administrative, religious and commercial centre of several centuries. The medievel urban topography has been preserved virtually intact (in particular, there is evidence of the different ethnic communities who lived there), along with many fine Baroque and later buildings.

Struve Geodetic Arc

The Struve Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and over 2,820km. These are points of a survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a meridian. This helped establish the exact size and shape of our planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping. It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause. The original arc consisted of 258 main triangles with 265 main station points. The listed site includes 34 of the original station points, with different markings, i.e. a drilled hole in rock, iron cross, cairns, or built obelisks.

The Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathian (with Slovakia)

The Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathian, an outstanding example of undisturbed, complex temperate forests, constitute a transnational serial property of ten separate components along a 185 km axis from the Rakhiv Mountains and the Chornohirskyi Range in Ukraine, west along the Polonynian Ridge, to the Bukovské Vrchy and Vihorlat Mountains in Slovakia. They contain an invaluable genetic reservoir of beech and many species associated with, and dependent on, these forest habitats. They are also an outstanding example of the recolonization and development of terrestrial ecosystems and communities after the last Ice Age, a process which is still ongoing.