Things to do in Kharkiv

Landmark · Shevchenkivskyi, city centre

One of the largest city squares in Europe, dominated by Derzhprom — a 1928 constructivist complex of linked towers and skybridges, among the first reinforced-concrete high-rises anywhere and the emblem of the city. A guided aerial bomb struck it directly on 28 October 2024, destroying a wall and floors; earlier attacks in 2022 and January 2024 blew out its windows.

Local tip: Go and look at it, and read what happened to it. Restoration of Kharkiv's monuments has been deliberately deferred until the attacks stop, so what you see is the state of the city stated in concrete. It is the most honest introduction Kharkiv gives you.

Landmark · Three lines across the city

Opened in 1975 and now far more than a transport system: the city's primary air-raid shelter, home to thousands of people through 2022, free to ride since May 2022, and the site of classrooms fitted into stations so that children can be taught below ground.

Local tip: Ride the full length of a line once and pay attention to the fittings — the benches, the water points, the school rooms. It is the clearest picture anyone will get of how a European city of a million people adapted to being shelled, and it costs nothing.

Nature · Between Sumska Street and the university

The city's central park, running from the university down through mature trees and cascades, with the 1947 Mirror Stream pavilion and fountain — a small white rotunda that is Kharkiv's most photographed object after Derzhprom.

Local tip: The park is where the city goes to feel normal, and on a quiet afternoon it does. Note the shelter signs on your way in; everyone else has.

Culture · Kultury Street, Shevchenkivskyi

A 1920s writers' housing co-operative built in the shape of the word 'слово' — home to the generation of Ukrainian modernists later destroyed in the purges, which is why they are known as the Executed Renaissance. It was damaged by a Russian strike during the current war, which is a coincidence nobody in Kharkiv treats as one.

Local tip: Read one book by someone who lived here — Khvylovy, Kulish, Kurbas — before you walk past it. Without that the building is a block of flats; with it, it is the reason Kharkiv thinks of itself as a literary city rather than an industrial one.

Food · Moskovskyi/Kyivskyi, by the metro of the same name

For decades one of the largest markets in Europe — a small city of stalls selling clothes, food, tools and everything else — heavily damaged by shelling in 2022 and operating since at a fraction of its old scale.

Local tip: Go early, go with cash, and go with realistic expectations: this is not a tourist market and large parts of it are gone. What is left is still the cheapest place in the city to buy almost anything, and the people trading there are the reason.

Neighborhood · North-west of the centre, along Nauky Avenue

The comfortable inner-north district around the science avenue — 1960s and 70s blocks under big trees, university buildings, small cafés and the highest concentration of ordinary middle-class Kharkiv life still in place.

Local tip: This is where to look first if you are renting. It has metro, it is away from the northern districts that took the worst of 2022, and it is walkable in a way the outer estates are not.