Pereiaslav National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve

The Pereiaslav National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve (NHER “Pereiaslav”) is one of the largest museum complexes (reserves) in Ukraine (total area – 3,050 ha).
It includes the territory of the city of Pereiaslav, its surroundings and the Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi district, around which protection zones have been defined. The reserve exists on the basis of historical and cultural monuments and various collections of great historical and artistic significance. It includes more than 400 objects and monuments of cultural heritage.
The city of Pereiaslav has an ancient and distinguished history. According to Russian chronicles, it was the third city of the Old Rus state – after Kyiv and Chernihiv. And the Principality of Pereiaslav played the important role of a southern outpost on the path of steppe nomads’ raids on Kyiv.
In the early 1950s the local history museum occupied only three rooms in the ancestral house of Taras Shevchenko’s friend, the local doctor A. Kozachkovskyi. Three years later a new exposition was created, opened on 13 April 1954 – for the celebration of the jubilee date, the “300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia”. In the same year, by decision of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, the museum was given the III republican category and named the “Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi State Historical Museum”.
On the basis of this institution and the complex of monuments created by it, in 1979, in accordance with a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, the State Historical and Cultural Reserve was established, renamed a historical and ethnographic one on 15 March 1999 by a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
The status of a national reserve was granted by Decree of the President of Ukraine of 1 June 1999.
The first director of the reserve was Mykhailo Ivanovych Sikorskyi, Honoured Worker of Culture of Ukraine, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine and Hero of Ukraine (from 1951 to 2008).