The Yahotyn park has a history of over 200 years. The landscape park with rare plants, greenhouses, orangeries and gazebos was laid out by Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovskyi on the shores of a large man-made lake. To create the pond, in 1765 he ordered the channel of the lowland Supii River to be dammed, a dam that amazed contemporaries with its gigantic size and whose construction was compared to the earthwork art of Rome. One of the modern entrance roads to the city from the Kyiv – Kharkiv highway runs across this dam.
The next owner of Yahotyn, the hetman’s son Oleksii, a diplomat and senator who was fond of botany, continued to develop the park. He managed to assemble a rare collection of trees and shrubs from all over the world. The manor-and-park ensemble of the Rozumovskyis-Repnins was famous throughout the empire.
The park remains an adornment of the city today. One part of it resembles a forest, crossed in different directions by dirt alleys, while another is laid out with picturesque squares with paved paths, flower beds and garden benches. History comes alive in numerous sculptures of outstanding cultural figures who in their time visited Yahotyn or became an integral part of its biography: Taras Shevchenko, Hryhorii Skovoroda, Mykola Hohol, Kateryna Bilokur, Oleksandr Neporozhnii, and soldiers who defended their native land, in compositions dedicated to the newest pages of Yahotyn history.
The park is especially striking in spring, when rare flowers – scillas, lungworts and corydalis – bloom in carpets.
Along the Alley of Glory you can reach the bank of the Supii, admire the wide expanse of water, the islands, and watch ducks, herons, gulls and swans. The lake is considered the largest body of water on the Left Bank of Ukraine and is a real paradise for waterfowl.
