Since the full-scale invasion, hundreds of monuments have been damaged in Ukraine. Specialists had to develop new preservation and restoration methods literally on the fly. Moreover, monument-related projects lasting for many years have not disappeared. “Digital Labs: Restorers of Historical and Cultural Reserves” is an online laboratory uniting Ukrainian and world restoration experts. During its nine days, participants learned how to work with monuments while taking care of their history, environment, inclusion, and visitors’ safety during the war. Read on the impressions of three Ukrainian specialists from the event — and how the war has changed monuments’ state in Ukraine.
The National Reserve “Khortytsia”
With its rich history and exceptional concentration of archaeological monuments, Khortytsia simply couldn’t but become a historic, cultural, and nature reserve. Currently, the National Reserve “Khortytsia” involves seven objects: the Zaporizhzhia Cossacks History Museum; Historical and Cultural Complex “Zaporizhzhia Sich”; Museum of the Dnipro Rowing Flotilla; Memorial and Tourist Complex “Scythian State”; Museum Studios “City beyond the Rapids”; dozens of bronze age museumised sanctuaries; and museumised lines of fortifications created during the war with Turkey.
Unfortunately, the war has caused changes in our work. We had to stop offering tours and urgently save the exhibits that could be destroyed by military actions or stolen in case of occupation. After the aggressor country “recognised” the LPR and DPR on the night of 22 February 2022, the very next morning all of our employees, without agreement and instructions, came to work and began dismantling the exhibition, for they understood: This is war. On 24 February, we were packing and hiding exhibits already to the sound of explosions. At that time, the “orcs” were just a few tens of kilometres from Zaporizhzhia, but none of our employees was afraid and none abandoned their work. And so we did it!
The rescue of large-scale exhibits from the open-air complex “Scythian State” was a huge challenge. Before the war, about 100 stone monuments dating from 5000 BC to the early 20th century were presented there. These included anthropomorphic steles, sculptures, crosses of the Cossack period, as well as household tools: stupas, threshing stones, and troughs.
The crown jewel of the “Scythian state” is a collection of 34 Polovtsian sculptures that nomadic tribes left in our steppes. Part of the collection had to be covered with protective structures on the site, while most of it was dismantled and transported to the museum building for storage.
It was at this stage that we faced the biggest problem that we managed to solve with the House of Europe’s help. During transportation, it turned out that most of the stone monuments require urgent restoration, as in the open air they were strongly affected by various atmospheric phenomena. Besides, transportation itself is always a trauma for a thousand-year-old sculpture. Unfortunately, in our team we had no restorers specialising in stone items.
However, in July, we joined an online training under the Digital Labs programme for restorers of historical and cultural reserves. Honestly, I’ve never seen such a complete and useful course in such a short time. Thanks to both the selection of lecturers having vast practical experience and a wide range of topics, we managed to develop a programme for the restoration of stone sculptures and decide on materials, equipment, and schemes for submitting grant projects, as well as get individual consultations with restorers working with outstanding monuments of world culture.
Moreover, after our participation in the programme, the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH) positively responded to our request for restoration materials and equipment needed to work with stone sculptures. These are to be provided soon.
The House of Europe programmes made us feel that we are not alone with our problems — it is nice to know that the world is interested in Ukrainian culture and is willing to help. We now do feel that our culture and museum are part of something bigger — the European world.
Since the Kakhovka HPP was blown up and the Dnipro River level dropped sharply, the funds of our nature reserve have been daily replenished with the new monuments of different times that had previously been underwater — from the Bronze Age ceramics, to Cossack bullets and fire strikers, and to huge shipwrecks. Now we have more than 2,000 such finds. They require urgent restoration, study, and digitisation — while we continue seeking ways to preserve these unique artefacts.
Restoration Bureau Karp Restorer
Our bureau has been operating for over 10 years. We mainly aim to develop professional preservation of historical monuments of our country. This includes developing detailed scientific and project documentation and conducting comprehensive research, which together form the basis for carrying appropriate conservation and restoration measures in the future.
We particularly emphasise expertise. In Europe, innovative technologies are actively used, and historical monuments are studied at the molecular level. Herewith, in Ukraine there is sometimes still a lacking understanding of what restoration is, not to mention conservation. Our reality is comments like, “Oh, so you paint things?”, “Are you an artist?,” or “Why are you scratching for so long?”
But in fact, we are talking about the history of our country. Over the centuries, each generation left its own achievements to descendants, and thanks to them, we realise ourselves as a nation. Each monument not only reflects the past, but also shapes modern public consciousness. If we want to preserve the state, we must preserve the culture.
A special project that we are proud of and that was the first time this format could be implemented in Ukraine is the exhibition of transfers of Lviv Kamianytsia wall painting “My Apartment Has Shed Its Skin”. It aimed to acquaint visitors with the features and methods of preserving different layers of wall paintings in one object, with a particular focus on the transfer method. For more than a century now, this technique has been used in leading European countries as an alternative method of preservation, which includes the transportation and display of immovable monuments in the form of frescoes and murals.
During our research, conservation, and restoration works, we discover historical truth, often hidden under different-time renovations. This is actually a magic and exciting moment. In sacred buildings, we had cases when we, while studying wall paintings, unexpectedly discovered fragments of a saint’s face under plain layers. Under the suspended ceilings of Lviv stone houses, we found wooden beams of the Renaissance period with carvings and fragments of gilding from the 17th century. In fact, almost every historical object has its own original aesthetic concept and hides many mysteries that have yet to be revealed.
Heritage preservation in general and restoration in particular is a complex process, both morally and physically. Every centimetre, and in some cases even millimetre, of a work of art is original and unique, and therefore haste, unprofessionalism, or carelessness can lead to damage or complete loss.
With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, some of our projects stopped, and some were limited in funding. Some people from our team became volunteers, some returned to their hometowns, and some went abroad. But after two weeks or so, we already started to partially resume our work — although for a long time, of course, we had serious troubles with the availability and delivery of restoration materials.
The period of blackouts was particularly hard. Due to funding issues, we could not provide our restoration facilities with generators. There were periods when we worked in the cold, without light, and under the flashlights of our phones. But that didn’t stop us.
Following the full-scale invasion, we received a grant from the House of Europe for additional equipment to help quickly respond to emergencies at heritage sites. In addition, in the summer of 2023, our team participated in an educational conference for Ukrainian restorers of historical and cultural reserves. And in 2021, thanks to House of Europe’s support, our team organised a scientific expedition to the places of sacred monuments of Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Italy and carried out a study “Yosyp Bokshai: An Artistic Path beyond Ukraine”.
Now we continue to actively preserve cultural heritage. We have managed to complete part of the projects launched before the war, including the “Restoration of the Dome of the Church of the Ascension of the Lord” in Lviv. Also, we’ve opened the Art Library where we carried out works on interior murals.
Today, it is difficult to predict the timing of the end of hostilities as well as the scale of the damage caused. But we believe that via unity and perseverance in the struggle for good, we will be able to protect and preserve our cultural heritage and values.
UkrNDIprojectrestoration
For more than 75 years, our organisation has been engaged in designing the restoration of various monuments. The institute’s team comprises architects, historians, art experts, painting experts, chemists and technologists, and even our own laboratory. In general, based on the projects of our specialists, more than 1,500 monuments of architecture and urban planning have been restored in almost all regions of Ukraine.
My personal favourite and indeed challenging objects include the bursa of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, the public space from Desiatynna Lane to Vozdvyzhenka and Andriivskyi Descent, the government quarter between Instytutska, Lypska, and Hrushevskyi streets, and the Art Arsenal. Besides, before the full-scale invasion, we had just finished the restoration projects of the bell tower of St. Sophia Cathedral and the Art Arsenal and were planning to start implementing them. A unique place, which we also dealt with, is the Kyiv Zoo. Visitors see one thing there, while in fact it is a very complex object — a whole plant for maintenance, treatment, feeding, research studies, and science.
Last year, my major object was the bell tower of St. Sophia Cathedral. For the first time in many decades, we made 9-meter holes reaching the very foundation base to fully study how this bell tower was built 300 years ago. In addition, we developed a unique system to monitor the building’s condition. After the [St. Sophia] square was renovated in 2000, the bell tower began to move, so monitoring was needed to prevent the point when this movement could lead to deformation.
The most favourite object on the territory of St. Sofia Cathedral is the bursa. Together with the client, we’ve developed an idea of creating a museum complex there with a restoration centre and a children’s educational centre. Thus, it was a very interesting project — how, without harming the ancient building, to turn it into something relevant and modern so that there would be life and people there.
Within such objects, discoveries are made almost daily. Sometimes, they are even funny — at the level of foundation of the bell tower of St. Sophia Cathedral, we found strange holes of correct geometric shape and could not understand what they were. We then examined the samples and realized that 300 years ago, wooden construction waste was simply dumped there. The waste rotted, but the holes remained.
Still in general, my most complicated project is probably the Art Arsenal; I have been working on it since 2009. This is a grand object of 60,000 square meters. To come up with the best concept, experts spent a year and a half studying advanced foreign museum and art experience from Japan to Europe. Eventually, they managed to develop a truly unique project.
The House of Europe has also provided an opportunity for Ukrainian restoration specialists to listen to and communicate with world-class experts who had worked on objects of the scale of of the Colosseum or Notre-Dame de Paris. They shared their experience and restoration methodologies. It was really interesting and useful to listen to the people who restored, for example, a 1500-year-old basilica.
Unfortunately, over the past two years, Ukrainians have had their own unique experience of working with monuments destroyed due to military operations. Usually, restoration involves a year and a half of just research, and only then experts can proceed to design. However, in our conditions, there is no time for this, so we are talking about very fast emergency and conservation works according to our own methodology. In the end, my partner and I were given an opportunity to deliver a lecture for all teachers and participants. Eventually, after a one-hour speech, we replied to the audience’s questions for another hour and a half.
We have already developed unique projects of conservation and emergency works for the objects that had suffered due to the armed aggression: the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv and the children’s library of the Chernihiv Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities. Meanwhile, my birthday I spent inspecting the Chernihiv Drama Theatre. Now, with the support of grant donors, we are starting stabilisation works at the “Pedagogical Museum” facility, where the Central Council [of Ukraine] worked and where the UNR [the Ukrainian National Republic] was proclaimed.
Such an exchange of experience and ideas was very useful and will definitely be appropriate for our work. Generally, an architect is pleased when their object is opened, and an architect-restorer — when life returns there after their work. That is why we do it.
House of Europe is an EU-funded programme fostering professional and creative exchange between Ukrainians and their colleagues in EU countries and the UK. The programme focuses on different professional fields: culture and creative industries, education and youth work, social entrepreneurship, and media. House of Europe is implemented by Goethe-Institut Ukraine.
