Ukraine: UNESCO paves the way for the rehabilitation of Chernihiv’s historic centre
In April 2023, during her visit to Chernihiv and her meeting with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, committed to support efforts to rehabilitate the historic centre of Chernihiv, deeply affected in the early months of the war by the attacks from the Russian Federation. To draw up this important planning tool, a new mission of UNESCO and ICOMOS experts took place from March 18 to 22, 2024.
For several months now, UNESCO has been assisting the authorities in the development of a rehabilitation plan for this important urban landscape, built between the 9th and 13th centuries and included on Ukraine’s Tentative List, which may lead to an inscription on UNESCO World Heritage List in the future.
Following the dispatch of a joint UNESCO/ICCROM expert mission in October 2023 aiming at collecting data on damaged property, and the organisation of online workshops on methodologies and cases studies with Ukrainian authorities and cultural professionals, UNESCO led a five-day mission alongside ICOMOS. The mission aims to provide guidance, support and methodological tools for the preparation of the future recovery plan.
The experts visited a dozen cultural properties, including cathedrals, churches and ancient caves, of the National Preserve ‘Ancient Chernihiv’, the Drama Theatre, which had been directly hit by a missile in 2023. The team has also assessed the urban structure, wooden architecture, and historical buildings of the city centre.
These visits will enable the documentation of a selection of cultural properties in order to analyse the urban morphology that needs to be preserved. In particular, during a forthcoming UNESCO/ICOMOS mission, 3D scanning documentation will be used to get the best overview of the sites, an essential part of the development of a recovery plan.
Our theatre has suffered a direct hit of a Russian missile last year. At first, we were shocked and devastated, but already on the second day, together with the local community we started putting emergency measures in place. We have managed to establish a temporary roof to protect the theatre from rain and snow, and even revive the creative process, by transforming the safer parts of the theatre into two temporary stages, where now plays are shown. We are looking forward to reconstruction and to the day when the main stage of the theatre will welcome the guests once again
Chernihiv Drama Theatre - Before & after
The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach, as described in UNESCO 2011 Recommendation, is key to integrating policies and practices for the conservation of the built environment with broader urban development objectives, while respecting the values and traditions inherited from different cultural contexts. It is a key guide to balancing the conservation of architectural monuments with a broader recognition of the importance of social, cultural and economic processes in preserving urban values.
In that spirit, the mission also provided an opportunity to collaborate with the dedicated working group set up by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, in order to facilitate dialogue and broad participation in drawing up a rehabilitation plan up that complied with international standards and is the result of collective reflection.
Alongside its Ukrainian and international partners, and with the support of Japan, UNESCO will continue to assist the working group in the development of this rehabilitation plan over the coming months, which will serve as a concrete roadmap for the recovery of this key urban centre in Ukraine’s history.
Ukraine