Classroom lesson · Kyiv - the capital city · 🇺🇦 Ukraine

Kyiv - the capital city

One of the oldest cities in Europe, built on hills above a great river

The golden domes of an old building rising above the Dnipro river in Kyiv

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Kyiv (sometimes spelled Kiev) is the capital city of Ukraine. About 3 million people live there. It sits on a wide river called the Dnipro and is built on a row of green, leafy hills. Kyiv is one of the oldest cities in Europe - people have lived on this spot for more than 1,500 years.

Tell me more

The Dnipro is the third-longest river in Europe. It runs all the way from the north of Russia, through the middle of Belarus, then right through the middle of Ukraine and out into the Black Sea. From a high spot in Kyiv you can see the river curling away in both directions, with bridges crossing back and forth.

Kyiv has dozens of buildings with golden, rounded roofs called domes. When the sun shines on them, they glow like little suns themselves. Some of these buildings - like the Saint Sophia Cathedral - are nearly 1,000 years old. They were built when the city was the heart of an old kingdom called Kyivan Rus.

Underneath the city there is a metro - one of the deepest in the world. To get to the platform of Arsenalna station, you go down on an escalator for about five whole minutes. The station is 105 metres below ground. That is roughly the height of a 35-storey building, only upside down.

Kyiv is famous for chestnut trees - they line the streets and bloom with pink and white candles of flower every spring. The chestnut leaf is one of the city's symbols. Children play conkers with the seeds in the autumn.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Why do you think so many old cities were built on rivers?
  2. 02Some buildings in Kyiv are nearly 1,000 years old. What might a building that old have seen happen around it?
  3. 03Riding a five-minute escalator into the ground sounds strange. Why might engineers have built the metro so deep?
Try this

Classroom activity

On a piece of paper, draw a city skyline of your own town. Then look up a photo of Kyiv's skyline and draw it next to yours. Mark the river, the hills and the golden domes. Compare: what is the same? What is different?