One of the oldest theatres in the Left-bank Ukraine.
The cultural centre of the city and the only professional theatre in Mariupol, which has become a symbol of humanitarian catastrophe in 2022 inflicted by Russia, has turned into a mass grave for hundreds of people hiding there from Russian missiles.
The building of the Mariupol Drama Theatre was constructed in the 1956–1960s in the style of the Soviet Monumental Classicism. The pediment was decorated with the sculptural composition of steelworkers and husbandmen representing main jobs in Pryazovia land, where Mariupol is located. There are also sculptures of art patronesses performing the praise ode.
A big auditorium with 800 seats, 143 theatre seasons, and about 50 actors in a troupe. During the spring of 2022, the theatre was full of people again: not drama spectators, but the witnesses of the real invasive Russian war against Ukraine. Hundreds of Mariupol residents were hiding in the theatre basements with their children.
Since people believed the enemy would follow the international law of war, they wrote the word ‘Children’ on the asphalt on both sides of the theatre in big letters in Russian. However, the Russian occupants dropped a heavy bomb on the theater on March 16 intentionally, neglecting all the signs and inscriptions. The central part of the building was entirely destroyed. About 600 people were found dead under the ruins — mainly women, kids, and the elderly.
Several European countries immediately expressed their solidarity with Ukraine. On March 17, 2022, the Italian Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini declared the willingness of the Italian government to reconstruct the Mariupol Drama Theatre. The Deutsches Theater in Berlin followed by holding an action of support to Ukraine by writing the word ‘Children’ in Russian at the entrance. Similar events took place in Vienna and Warsaw.
Ukrainian heroes had been defending Mariupol for almost three months in extremely difficult conditions, before the occupiers finally seized the city. It was not the Mariupol everybody knew before. Instead, it was what was left of the city: scorched land and destroyed buildings. At one of the volunteer centres, kids who fled Mariupol said: ‘There is no city any more. But you can come visit it as the sea is still there.’ In Mariupol, there is now just the Azov sea and the sea of tears, grief, and Russian war crimes. Russian occupants have been desperately trying to eliminate the evidence of their crimes, the Drama Theatre being one of them.
Whatever stored the memories may now become a memory itself.
Formerly Palace of Culture of the Azovstal plant. The building of the former Continental hotel (1887–1910).
A unique monastery complex of the XVI–XIX centuries with natural caves.
Historical buildings reflecting the Mariupol architecture of the late XIX and early XX centuries before the Bolshevik Revolution.
Donbas Arena is the home stadium of the Ukrainian ‘Shakhtar’ football club, which became the first of the ‘elite’ category in Ukraine and in all of Eastern Europe.
An ancient building of 1902 in the Northern Art Nouveau style, which comprised under its roof the works by respected Ukrainian landscape painters, as well as world-famous marine and realist artists.
Invaluable monumental artworks, created by a group of Ukrainian monumentalists led by Alla Horska, a dissident artist and one of the Sixtiers movement’s founders. These panels incorporated elements of Ukrainian folk tradition, contemporary world trends, and Soviet art.
Formerly prospering trade and then a metallurgical centre of Ukraine that has become the symbol of the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine and the genocide committed by the Russian army and government.
The only church in the world entirely decorated with Petrykivka paintings, an ancient style of folk Ukrainian decorative painting included in the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage.
The museum was established at the Faculty of History of Mariupol State University. It has become an important cultural and educational site bringing together students, professors, and citizens around the native land’s history.
The manor of Mariupol City Council’s mayor, having more than 150 years of history behind. Its architecture incorporated elements of the Stalinist Empire, Neoclassicism, and Baroque.
One of the oldest and largest Ukrainian museums, which collection comprised over 180 thousand exhibits, including the monuments and artefacts of world importance.
One of the biggest steam mills in the German Mennonite colony that existed in the Donetsk region at the turn of the 20th century. Built in 1903, this mill had been feeding people of New York and all of its suburbs for decades.
The central church of the Sviatohirsk Lavra’s convent, erected in the neoclassical style with baroque elements in 2005 in the site of a stone church of 19th century dismantled by the Bolsheviks.
The house was built in the constructivist style in 1929. It has been the centre of the city’s creative life for almost a hundred years.
Former State Bank’s building, constructed at the turn of the 20th century. In 2019, this site housed the city library, which history began back in 1904. An intellectual and educational centre of the city.
A two-storey manor in the classical style with a neo-Gothic tower, built in Mariupol 125 years ago. The state was a property of respected doctors.
Part of the Sviatohirsk Lavra. All the skete’s buildings are made of massive pine trunks. The All Saints Church, the main skete’s sanctuary, used to be the biggest wooden church in Ukraine.
The Azovstal plant in Mariupol was one of the largest iron and steel producers in Europe. In 2022 it became a symbol of resistance to brutal Russian aggression and the incredible courage of Ukrainian fighters.
Educational institution with more than 140 years of history where many generations of Mariupol citizens studied.
Center of spiritual life of Muslims of Donetsk region.
Two buildings are a monument to an entire era. They were the last buildings in Mariupol designed in the Stalinist Neoclassicism style.
The mosque was built in 2007 on the site of a mosque built in 1906 and destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1936.
St. Demetrius Church dedicated to the holy martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki is one of the oldest in the region.