Chernivtsi

Introducing Chernivtsi

Chernivtsi is a glorious hotchpotch, a bittersweet ruin that might be smartening itself up in the coming years. Leafy but dishevelled – especially its pavements – it displays the signs of a more elegant past. Its phantasmagorical university is not only the best preserved of its many historic buildings – combined with the huge Kalynivsky Market on the city’s outskirts, that temple of higher learning is also responsible for this shabby city’s lively atmosphere.

Six hundred years old in October 2008, Chernivtsi was once the chief city of Bukovyna (Beech Tree Land) in old Moldavia (now Moldova). It belonged to the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century, when much of the city’s ornate architecture was built, and after WWI was temporarily drawn into Romania. Today the city remains the ‘capital’ of the unofficial Bukovynian region, but its past Jewish, Armenian and German communities are now just ghostly presences.

Last updated: Feb 17, 2009

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