Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People

A black crack runs down the titanium arch on the Dnipro slopes, and someone put it there on purpose. It’s hard to miss — a 35-metre bow of titanium, about 50 metres across, arched over a viewing terrace at the green edge of Khreshchatyk Park. The Soviet Union raised it in 1982 to toast the ‘friendship’ of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. In 2022 Kyiv renamed it the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People and left it standing — stripped of the bronze Soviet figures that once posed beneath it.

Older Kyivans still call it the ‘friendship arch’ from habit; plenty just say the ‘rainbow’. Most people climb up for one thing anyway: the wide view of the river, Trukhaniv Island and the left bank running to the horizon.

A titanium rainbow, 1982

The monument went up between 1978 and 1982, timed to land on two anniversaries at once: Kyiv’s 1,500th and the 60th of the USSR. Sculptor Oleksandr Skoblikov worked with architects Serhiy Myrhorodsky, Ihor Ivanov and Kostyantyn Sydorov. Their centrepiece was the great arc of titanium — a metal that read as space-age in the early 1980s — curved into what everyone promptly called the ‘rainbow’.

Two sculptural groups stood beneath it. One was bronze: a Russian and a Ukrainian worker hoisting the Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples overhead. The other, in granite, showed the 1654 Pereiaslav Council, the pact Soviet myth sold as Ukraine’s ‘reunion’ with Russia. Not everyone bought the message. For its low, looming shape, some Kyivans had a different name for the arch — the ‘yoke’.

From friendship to freedom

The crack came first. In 2018 activists marked the arch with a jagged black line made to look like a fracture — the ‘friendship’, they argued, had always been a fiction. It’s still there.

The rest moved fast. Weeks into Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, crews began taking down the bronze workers; as the figure standing in for the Russian came off, its head broke away and fell — footage that spread across the country as an accidental metaphor. On 14 May 2022 the city council renamed the arch the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People. Two years later it was struck from the register of protected monuments and the granite Pereiaslav group was removed as well. The titanium bow stayed: too much a part of the skyline to lose, its meaning simply turned inside out.

The best balcony over the Dnipro

Strip away the history and the climb still earns its keep. The arch stands on a high bluff, and the terrace around it works as one long balcony over the right bank. The Dnipro opens below — broad water, the woods of Trukhaniv Island, the roofs of Podil, the bridges and the left bank fading into haze.

By day you watch the river traffic; at sunset the slope becomes one of the best-placed viewpoints in the city, the sky over the far bank warming as Kyiv lights up. The arch is lit after dark. It costs nothing and never closes. Come for the last hour before sunset, and bring a layer — the open slope catches the wind even in summer. Want the railing to yourself? Come early.

The glass bridge next door

The best reason to treat the arch as half a walk stands a few minutes off: the pedestrian-and-bicycle bridge over Volodymyrskyi Uzviz, which everyone calls the glass bridge. It opened on Kyiv Day in May 2019 and runs about 210 metres, linking Khreshchatyk Park, where the arch sits, to Volodymyrska Hirka across the ravine.

The name is literal: transparent panels are set into the deck, and stepping onto one opens the drop under your feet. The glass famously cracked within days of the opening, which tells you something — but the photos are worth it. That’s the appeal: a 1980s titanium arch on one side, a pane of sky on the other. One note — the panels turn slick after rain and in winter, so wear something with grip.

Getting there, and what's around

The arch sits in the middle of Kyiv, so it’s an easy one. The nearest metro stations, Maidan Nezalezhnosti and Khreshchatyk, connect underground into one hub; surface toward European Square, walk down into Khreshchatyk Park, and the arch is minutes away and visible from a distance. No ticket, no schedule — it’s open ground, day or night, though the approach runs on slopes and steps.

You land in the thick of the centre. European Square and Maidan Nezalezhnosti are a short walk off. Cross the glass bridge and you reach Volodymyrska Hirka, the monument to Volodymyr the Great and, higher up, St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, with the old funicular dropping to Podil. Treat the arch as a start, not a stop.