Lesia Danylenko proudly showed off her new front door. Volunteers had nicknamed its elegant transom window the “croissant”, a nod to its curved shape. “I think it’s more of a peacock,” she said, admiring its branch-like details. The restoration project at one of Kyiv’s early 20th-century art nouveau houses was supported by residents, who celebrated with two pavement parties.
It was also an act of resistance against Russia, she explained: “We are trying to live like normal people despite the war. It’s about arranging our life in the best possible way. We’re not afraid of staying in Ukraine. I could have left the country and moved away to Italy or Germany. Instead, I’m here. The new entrance shows our commitment to our homeland.”
Lesia Danylenko outside the restored art nouveau doorway of her home in central Kyiv Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Saving Kyiv’s architectural heritage seems strange at a time when Russian missiles and drones routinely fall on the capital, bringing death and destruction. Since the beginning of 2025, the Kremlin has dramatically stepped up its aerial raids. After each attack, workers board up shattered windows with plywood and try, where possible, to save residential buildings.
Amid the bombs, a group of activists have been attempting to preserve the city’s crumbling mansions, built in a playful style known as Ukrainian modernism. Danylenko’s house is in the central Shevchenkivskyi district. It was built in 1906 and was originally the home of a rich fur dealer. Its exterior is decorated with horse chestnut leaves and delicate camomile flowers.
A volunteer restoring the front door of Danylenko’s building. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
“They are symbols of Kyiv. These properties are quite rare nowadays,” Danylenko said. The Austrian-German architect Martin Klug designed the mansion. Several other buildings nearby display similar art nouveau features, including asymmetry – with a gothic tower on one side and a turret on the other. One much-loved house in the area boasts two unhappy white stucco cats, as well as owls, masks and a devil.
But Russia is only one threat. Preservation campaigners say they face unscrupulous developers who knock down listed buildings, corrupt officials and a governing class indifferent or hostile to the city’s rich architectural history. The harsh winter climate adds another burden.
“Kyiv is a city where money wins. We don’t have real political will to save our heritage,” said Dmytro Perov, an activist with the Heritage Kyiv group. He claimed the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, was friends with many of the developers who bulldoze important houses. “Klitschko lives in an illegal building with a striptease club. His vision for the capital comes straight out of the 90s and Tony Soprano,” he alleged. Klitschko denies the claim, which he says comes from political rivals.
The preservation campaigner Dmytro Perov warns that neglect and unscrupulous development are endangering Kyiv’s architectural legacy. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Perov said many of the civically minded activists who once defended older properties were fighting on the frontline or had been killed. Russia’s almost four-year war meant that everyone was facing financial problems, he added, including judges who mysteriously ruled in favour of dubious new-build schemes. “The longer this goes on the more we see degradation of our society and governing institutions,” he argued.
He took the Guardian to one of the most egregious demolition sites in the riverside Podil neighbourhood. The street was home to classical 19th-century houses. A developer who acquired the plot agreed to preserve its attractive brick facade. A day after Russia’s 2022 invasion, diggers tore it down. Last week, a crane excavated foundations for a new shopping and business centre, watched by a surly security guard.
Construction work in the Podil neighbourhood.
Anatolii Pohorily, a Heritage Kyiv supporter, said there was not much hope for the remaining turquoise-painted houses on the site. Sometimes developers levelled old properties while claiming they were doing “archaeological research”, he said. The Soviet Union also inflicted immense damage on the capital, reconstructing its Khreshchatyk thoroughfare after the second world war so it could accommodate tanks and communist military parades.
Anatolii Pohorily is trying to preserve Kyiv’s pre-communist architecture from illegal development. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
One of Kyiv’s most prominent champions of historic buildings, the tour guide and blogger Serhiy Mironov, was killed in 2022 while fighting in Bakhmut. His colleague Nelli Chudna said she and other volunteers were carrying on Mironov’s important preservation work. There were originally 3,500 brick-built mansions in Kyiv, many constructed for the city’s prosperous sugar barons. Only 80 of their original doors survived, she said.
“It wasn’t Russian rockets that got rid of them. It was us,” she lamented. “The war could go on for another 20 years. If we don’t defend architecture now nothing will be left,” she added. Chudna recently helped to restore a characterful creeper-covered house built in 1910, which serves as the headquarters of her True Kyiv organisation and doubles as a film set and museum. The property has a new red door and authentic railings; inside is a period bathroom and antique mirrors.
Chudna is trying to preserve Kyiv’s architecture despite the pressures of war and development. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
The building’s tenant, artist Yurii Pikul, described his home as “very cool and a little bit cold”. Why do many Ukrainians not value the past? “Unfortunately they lack education and taste. It’s all about business. We are trying as a country to go to the west. But we are still some distance away from civilisation,” he said. Soviet ways of thinking lingered, with people reluctant to take personal responsibility for their built surroundings, he added.
Some buildings are collapsing because of official neglect. Chudna pointed to a once-magical villa hidden behind a modern hospital, the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation. Its roof had collapsed; pigeons nested among its broken windows; rubbish lay under a fairytale tower. “Often we don’t win,” she admitted. “Restoration is therapy for us. We are trying to save all this history and beauty.”
