page_title: Museums in Kiev
section_title: History museums
hierarchical_section_title: Museums in Kiev / History museums
caption_attribution_description: English: Painted battle tanks at the World War II Memorial, Kiev, Ukraine
context_page_description: Museums in Kiev, Ukraine include museums of art, history, transportation, and religion. They constitute an important aspect of Kiev's focus on knowledge, culture, and history.
context_section_description: The Museum of The History of Ukraine in World War II is a complex which commemorates the Eastern Front of World War II.
  Its collection consists of about 300,000 pieces, and it has been visited by over 24 million visitors.
  The National Museum-Preserve "Battle for Kyiv 1943" is dedicated to the Kiev Strategic Offensive Operation of autumn 1943. The museum exposition narrates the events of the autumn of 1943, the Battle of the Dnieper and the Lyutezh Offensive Operation during the Battle of Kiev (1943). The Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum in Podil is a striking display of the tragedy of the nuclear disaster. The symbolic representation of many old road signs of the deserted towns and cities are stated to give an eerie feeling, and there are a number of Surrealist pictures of the disaster.
  The National Historical Museum of Ukraine is a national heritage museum dedicated to the theme of Ukrainian independence. The museum highlights the struggle for independence tracing back from the Slavic times to the present. The museum, which opened in 1904, was shifted to Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in 1935 and later during the war to Ufa, and after the war the collections were moved back to Kiev to the present location. It has many archeological artifacts found locally, apart from ethnographical and numismatic exhibits, paintings and sculptures, old books and many other artifacts. The exhibits also trace the ancient history of Ukraine from the time of Trypillya settlements, weaponry of ancient Polovtsy, artifacts of Kievan Rus period, the Soviet rule and also of the Orange Revolution, and to the present. Exhibits related to nationally-renowned dancer Serge Lifar are also on display here. The first foundation stone of the church in Kiev, built in 989, is located in the precincts of the museum. The church was destroyed by the Mongols in 1240 and was never reconstructed.
  The Kiev Archive Museum of Transitional Period was a brief Nazi propaganda museum that was established by German occupants in Ukraine in 1942. to October 1942. The expositions were oriented specifically to "achievements" of the German occupation and crimes of Joseph Stalin's regime. The museum's director was the Ukrainian historian and former mayor Oleksandr Ohloblyn who used this opportunity to organize an exhibition about cultural monuments destroyed by Bolsheviks. Several historians, such as Oleksandr Hruzynsky, Svitozar Drahomanov, Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko etc., were appointed scientific advisors of the museum, but it was not very successful, and was soon closed and did not reopen.
  The Toilet History Museum, located in the Kyiv Fortress, opened in 2006. It contains the largest collection of toilet-related souvenirs in the world and chronicles the history of the toilet from pre-biblical times to the present.
caption: Museum of The History of Ukraine in World War II
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