In the center of Kyiv, on Bankovaya Street, 10, there is an amazing building that cannot leave anyone indifferent. The facades, the fancy staircase at the main entrance, and the decorations in the form of fantastic sculptures of chimeras evoke mystical sensations. And the heads of rhinoceroses and elephants, crocodiles and antelopes mounted in the walls of the mysterious concrete house, and nimble lizards hiding in the flutes of the columns create the impression of either a rebus or an exotic menagerie.
Elephant and snake trunks replace water drains. On the roof lurked giant toads and sea monsters in company with Nereids, and instead of hair on the female heads there were chains, fantastic leaves and buds.
In addition to the bright decor of the facades, the house has other unusual features. There are few multi-storey houses in the world. Gorodetsky’s house on the Bankovaya side is three-story, and on the Franko Square side it is six-story.
I propose to take a closer look at this wonderful house and the well-known facts and legends associated with it.

This is, in fact, the architect and owner of the house himself - Vladislav Gorodetsky.

The house was designed in an early decorative modern style, which was not typical for the early 20th century. On a plot of land that was considered unsuitable for construction due to the steep slope above the former lake in the valley.
In this connection, the site was purchased by Gorodetsky for almost nothing from the Kyiv House-Building Society.

One of the legends relating to this house is associated with the beginning of construction. According to this legend (or maybe not quite a legend - go figure out how it all really happened), when Gorodetsky announced his intention to build on this site, he made a bet with the architects Alexander Kobelev and Vladimir Leontovich that in two years he will build his own home here. Then the Kiev architect Alexander Kobelev put his hand to the architect’s forehead and said with pathos: “You, sir, are crazy. Only a madman could come up with such an idea.”
Another legend claims that by building his house, Gorodetsky did a good service to concrete manufacturers, who organized an architectural experiment to advertise cement, a new building material for those times. By the way, this option is the most plausible - it was not for nothing that the architect was a co-owner of the For plant, which produced this cement...

The use of a high parapet on the roof, which made it possible to practically hide the roof. They say that the building of the architect Gorodetsky on Bankova, 10 is the first “roofless” in the Ukrainian capital.
The house had an icehouse with separate refrigerators for all apartments, a laundry room, a wood warehouse, a basement, a wine cellar, a carriage barn, a coachman's room and... a cowshed. Original Gorodetsky wanted to serve his residents and guests only with fresh milk! By the way, the barn was located so that the smells did not cause any discomfort to people...

According to another legend, Gorodetsky built this house in memory of his daughter, who, because of unhappy love, committed suicide by throwing herself into the waters of the Dnieper, either because of a family quarrel, or because of unhappy love, which is why the design is so there are many marine motifs. I wonder if it occurred to anyone then: why did the inconsolable father depict not his daughter, but the creatures that might have profited from her?..
However, as it was established, Elena Gorodetskaya (married to Yatsenko) was alive and well during the construction of the house and died much later than her father.

The legend about the drowned beautiful wife (or daughter) of the architect, who supposedly in memory of the incident decorated the roof of the mansion with fish, toads and mermaids with seines, this is most likely a transformed story that occurred in the 2nd half of the 19th century, when the site was part of a huge estate, located between Institutskaya, Bankova and Lutheranskaya streets. The estate belonged to a doctor, professor at the University of St. Vladimir F. Meringu. At that time there were no apartment buildings here - only the owner's family mansion, greenhouses, a park, ponds and outbuildings. One day, a tragedy occurred in the Mering family: his daughter drowned in the sea.

The sculptural decorations of the facade, based on Gorodetsky’s own sketches, were made by his assistant, the Milanese sculptor Elio Salya, who left his signature “E. Sala. 1902" under the sculptural composition of the fight between a lioness and an eagle.
On the walls of the house there are concrete heads of rhinoceroses, giraffes, lions, crocodiles, antelopes and other African animals. Concrete elephant trunks hanging over the sidewalks were used as drainpipes.

Due to financial problems associated with the safari hobby, in July 1912 Gorodetsky decided to mortgage his mansion to the Kyiv Mutual Loan Society.
The inability to pay interest on the loan led to the fact that in 1913 the estate with the mansion was sold by a credit society at auction. Ownership of the mansion passed to Daniil Balakhovsky, the French consular agent in Kyiv. In 1916, the house was bought by a certain Samuil Nimets, a merchant of the first guild.

After the October Revolution of 1917, the building was nationalized, and all apartments in the building became communal.
Since 1921, the building housed the headquarters of the military labor logging squad. Later, the new government placed the Veterinary Department of the Kyiv Military District in it.

During the Great Patriotic War, the building suffered significant damage and remained abandoned. After the war, the building was used as housing for actors of the Ivan Franko Theater. Then the Central Committee of the CP(b)U ordered the use of the building as clinic No. 1 for members of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U.
After the collapse of the USSR, the building belonged to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. Over time, the piles lost their supporting function, and at the junction of the strip and pile foundations, the house split into two parts. One part of the house tilted towards the residence of the President of Ukraine by 33 cm, and towards the Ivan Franko Theater by 10 cm.
In 1998, the UkrNIIproektrestavratsiya institute developed a reconstruction project for the “House with Chimeras.” The reconstruction and restoration itself was carried out in 2003. Based on the surviving old drawings of Gorodetsky, the interior and paintings on the walls were restored. The pile field was restored, but the restorers did not straighten the house, which leaned more than 30 cm towards Bankovaya; straightening the house would mean that it was being rebuilt, not restored. To install windows into walls that had warped over time, craftsmen had to make crooked window frames.

Currently, three floors of the building (third, fourth and fifth) have been converted into premises for events with the participation of the President of Ukraine. On the first and second floors of the residence there are office rooms for state protocol and ceremonial workers of the presidential secretariat.

Let's remember another legend and wish the current owners of the house longevity and prosperity, despite it.
Legend says that before leaving the house, Gorodetsky placed a curse on it. Allegedly, all the residents of the mansion will be unhappy, and only Gorodetsky’s descendants will be able to easily get along with the chimeras. Supporters of this version point out that the offices that owned or rented premises here went bankrupt - their funds mysteriously disappeared, their organizations were disbanded.

In 1938, four years after the capital of Soviet Ukraine was moved from the industrial and architecturally “advanced” Kharkov to the quiet and almost patriarchal Kyiv, the poetess Olga Anstey (1912 - 1985) wrote a pastoral sonnet, unusual for that era, about one of the best examples of “Kyiv modernity” ", known to Kiev residents as the "House with Chimeras" - the former house of the architect Vladislav Gorodetsky on Bankova Street, 10.

A tasteless dreamer, a mannered mime
I came up with you in a proud dream.
Above the square an arrogant massif
You have grown up and are surprised by yourself!..
You're screaming all over, we're tormented by immobility,
But the tailed divas are destined to touch
And the unbridled manes of the Nerei
Freeze in a pantomime convulsion!..

Thanks to Wikipedia for preparing the materials.

House with chimeras (Ukraine) - description, history, location. Exact address, phone number, website. Tourist reviews, photos and videos.

• Tours for the New Year Worldwide
• Last minute tours Worldwide

Previous photo Next photo

The house with chimeras is one of the strangest buildings in Kyiv. It is located at Bankovskaya 10, not far from the Presidential Administration. The house was built in 1901-1902. in the Art Nouveau style, by the Polish-born architect Vladislav Gorodetsky. This site was initially unsuitable for construction - the area was swampy and the soil was mobile, but in record time the house was built entirely from concrete and cement.

Concrete at that time was a new and rare material, only rich people could afford it. The architect Gorodetsky was one of those people, so he did not skimp not only on the house itself, but also on the decorations. To demonstrate what cement can do, the facade of the house was lavishly decorated with images of chimeras - fabulous mythical creatures. It also depicts mermaids, giant toads and water lilies, rhinoceroses, antelopes, as well as elephants, whose trunks serve as drains during the rains,

The inside of the house is no less amazing. On the staircase openings there is a lamp in the shape of a giant catfish, the stucco on the ceiling depicts a shipwreck with the participation of a huge octopus, and on the sides of the marble staircase there are fabulous birds.

Gorodetsky was a keen hunter, and it was this hobby that gave him the idea of ​​creating such unusual interiors.

Initially, it was assumed that the apartments in this building would be rented out and generate income for Gorodetsky, but there were few such rich people in Kyiv, and yet, some of them were still rented out. Today the house belongs to the Presidential Administration and is used to receive foreign delegations.

Legends of the House with Chimeras

During the creation and existence of the House with Chimeras, more than one legend associated with it arose, but two of them are the most famous.

As you know, the soil on which the house stands was initially unsuitable for construction. Therefore, the surrounding areas were given over at one time for state construction, and this one, among others, was auctioned off. At this public auction, the architect Gorodetsky met with his colleagues Vladimir Leontovich and Alexander Kobelev and expressed his intention to build a house in the swamp using only concrete. They only laughed, but Gorodetsky was a gambling man and made a bet with them, which he eventually won.

The second legend says that Gorodetsky built this house in memory of his dead daughter, who drowned herself because of unhappy love. However, according to other sources, Gorodetsky had only one daughter, who lived a long and happy life.

On Saturday, my old dream came true - I finally got inside one of the most beautiful and most mysterious buildings in Kyiv, which is located on Bankova Street 10, exactly opposite the Presidential Administration. The building itself is one of the many presidential residences and bears the name " House with Chimeras".

As you know, this house was built by the architect Gorodetsky in two years in 1901-1903 - six months for construction and one and a half for interior and exterior decoration. We were told that Gorodetsky bought a rather problematic piece of land on the cheap - a hillock, and also underground water... After which he made a bet with another architect, Kobelev, that he would build a multi-story building here. And he, of course, succeeded!

The hillock was designed in an original way - on one side the house has three floors, and on the other - six.

They say that initially, when Gorodetsky was planning the house and came to an agreement with the sculpture workshop of the Italian brothers Salya, the house looked much more modest in the project, but then it was nevertheless decorated with numerous figures.
Why this is so is unknown. I think it wasn’t enough for Gorodetsky to just build a house here, he decided to make it unique! By the way, there are no chimeras on the house - entirely real-life animals, fish and girls...)
There is even a riddle that Kiev residents like to tell guests of the city: all the figures on the house are supposedly paired and repeated twice or more times. And only one crocodile. Of course, you need to find a crocodile, for good luck...)))

These are lizards, not crocodiles!

Another legend says that so many underwater inhabitants are depicted here in memory of Gorodetsky’s drowned daughter, but this is a fiction - his daughter significantly outlived her father, and her descendants, apparently, live somewhere in America.

Tourists can get inside only on Saturdays, when only 4 excursions are held, and then it depends on the schedule of government events.
I just miraculously managed to grab the last free ticket to one of the groups!
We walked through the gates of the house and through the doors of “Entrance number two” we went inside...

A security guard was waiting for us outside the door - he copied our passport data, took away our mobile phones and cameras... Yyyyyy...
So what follows are the photos I found on the Internet. There weren’t many of them found, but even of them I will show only those rooms that I saw myself.

While the outside of the house is decorated with live animals and fish, the inside is entirely plaster skulls, carcasses, guns... One of Gorodetsky’s hobbies was hunting, and this was directly reflected in the decoration of the house. They also say that Gorodetsky turned all his hunting trophies into stuffed animals (which, of course, have not survived), was passionate about Africa (this can be seen from the sculptures and paintings on the walls and ceiling), and even once brought a giraffe to Kyiv!
This is the spiral staircase inside. They showed it to us from the same point, allowing us, however, to look a little higher, at the ceiling.
The game hanging in the flight is also plaster and perfectly preserved. The paintings on the walls were restored - at one time there was even a hospital in the House, then it suffered the most - cabinets and tools were screwed to the walls, the walls were painted over, but at least they didn’t really get to the ceilings...

Staircase columns in the shape of bird's feet. And among them suddenly there are angels - look closely, you can see them there. Allegedly, this is a tribute to the request of the architect’s wife for at least some degree of romance...)

On the next landing you can see a lamp made of two intertwined fish. I found this photo online - really of poor quality and without lamps...

And here only the top of the lamp is visible...

The house had many owners and tenants, which, of course, did not improve its condition.
We were shown the floor where Gorodetsky and his family once lived. He rented out rooms on other floors.
A lot of things in the house were restored already in 2003, when the very bottom floor was cleared of dirt, and the figures on the outside were strengthened... And inside, a lot of things were restored based on photographs of Gorodetsky himself, of which there are not many left.

Perhaps it was because of this hall that the house was once nicknamed “The Bottom of the Sea” by the townspeople. From this hall the exit is exactly to Bankovaya, to the Administration.

The walls are decorated with drawings of sunken ships and fish. And on the ceiling is a giant octopus, whose tentacles are entwined with algae with fish and shells. Everything is made of concrete and partially covered with mother-of-pearl, which makes it seem like real shells were used.

And this is the hall for receiving foreign delegations. You can tell by the seats where the heads of delegations are.

In general, initially almost all rooms had two or more exits, and there were also secret passages. But when the Presidential Administration took the house under “its care,” the “extra” doors and corridors were removed for security purposes.
It’s not so visible in the photo, but there is molding on the walls and ceiling in the form of irises - they are actually bright pink, so this room is jokingly compared to the famous “Kyiv cake”)))
Windows are visible in the wall on the right - there is a hidden room for translators. It is completely unclear where the door is, since in the next room along the corridor there is a small banquet hall...

This is the Small Banquet Hall - under Gorodetsky it was also a dining room. On the ceiling there is sculpture on a gastronomic theme - a hodgepodge of pineapples, corn, and other fruits and vegetables. The chandelier with horns was restored from photographs.

Nearby there is a dressing room - also an incredibly beautiful room with a drawing of an archer on the ceiling. I found this picture of this room - without hangers yet.

We were shown some other rooms on this floor. I also remember the African-style hall with images of lions and hippos. There are paintings hanging on the walls of the corridors and in the rooms. Originals borrowed from Kyiv museums (hmm).

And in the African hall we found a decorated Christmas tree! Artificial, but not a cone. Quite human, with green toys and gold beads (not made of gold, I think...)))

Entry is prohibited to the remaining floors and other rooms - people are working. Well, besides, they say it’s less interesting there, and there’s less modeling in general.
You have to take my word for it.
Perhaps one day the Mariinsky Palace will be renovated, the residence will move there, and there will simply be a museum for everyone. Although I doubt something...

And one more legend. They say that before leaving the house, Gorodetsky placed a curse on it, saying that only his direct descendants would be able to get along with chimeras, while the rest who occupied the house would face failure. Allegedly for this reason, all the organizations that rented premises here went bankrupt, the offices fell apart... And now, let me remind you, there is a presidential residence here...
Well, once again absorb the beauty with your eyes - and go out. The excursion time has ended (just under an hour), and the next group is already impatiently marking time on the threshold.

From the outside, the house is different on all sides, but you can’t see it everywhere - there are guards, there are bushes... But the transformer booth is beautiful...))

And lanterns in style.

In general, near the House with Chimeras, it is most beautiful in the spring, when a variety of flowers replace each other in the flowerbeds. And now the only colors available are flags...

I noticed a sign hanging on a small guard house (as I thought) near the House with Chimeras:
"Main Directorate for Ensuring Access to Public Information"...
So this is why the House is surrounded by mystery..))

All that remains is to pet that same crocodile - for good luck...)

Thanks a lot

The House with Chimeras is a brick building in Art Nouveau style located in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. The house got its name thanks to the sculptural decorations (located both on the facade of the house and inside it), the theme of which is terrestrial and underwater fauna, hunting attributes, and fairy-tale creatures.

The building is located in the Pechersky district on Bankova Street, 10, opposite the Administration of the President of Ukraine. Architect Vladislav Gorodetsky built it in 1901-1903 as an apartment building with premises for his family. The construction site was chosen above a steep cliff along Bankovaya Street, on the former bank of a drained swamp. Sculptural decorations based on his own sketches were made by sculptor Elio Salya

According to the first legend, Gorodetsky built this house in memory of his daughter, who, because of unhappy love, committed suicide by throwing herself into the waters of the Dnieper, either because of a family quarrel, or because of unhappy love, which is why there is so much in the design marine motifs. However, as it was established, Elena Gorodetskaya (married to Yatsenko) was alive and well during the construction of the house and died much later than her father.

The second legend says that Gorodetsky built the house by making a bet with famous architects Alexander Kobelev and Vladimir Leontovich that in two years he could build a building using materials that were new at that time: cement and concrete. To which Alexander Kobelev told him:

“Yes, sir, you are crazy. Only a madman could come up with such an idea.”
Two years later, Gorodetsky presented his house to the architects and won the bet.

According to the third legend, before leaving the house, Gorodetsky placed a curse on it. Allegedly, all the residents of the mansion will be unhappy, and only Gorodetsky’s descendants will be able to easily get along with the chimeras. Supporters of this version point out that the offices that owned or rented premises here went bankrupt - their funds mysteriously disappeared, their organizations were disbanded.

There is also a legend according to which the house was built not by Gorodetsky, but by Nikolai Dobachevsky. This legend is refuted by the fact that all the drawings of the house bear Gorodetsky’s signature

The house with chimeras was built according to the design of the architect Vladislav Gorodetsky in 1901-1902 using innovative solutions for those times under the leadership of engineer Anton Straus. By the time of the construction of the building, Gorodetsky was known as a major architect; he designed many buildings in Kyiv - in particular, the Church of St. Nicholas, the Kyiv Kenassa and the National Art Museum of Ukraine. In addition to architecture, Gorodetsky loved hunting, which is perhaps why his works contain so many sculptural images of animals.

Gorodetsky financed the construction of the house with borrowed funds with the intention of creating an apartment building. He created one apartment on each floor; they were connected by an elevator and stairs. Gorodetsky himself occupied the fourth floor of the building, the area of ​​which is about 380 m².

Gorodetsky bought the first part of the land on February 1, 1901, construction work began on March 18 of the same year. Construction of the outer walls was completed on 21 August, the roof and brickwork were completed on 13 September. Due to economic difficulties in the Russian Empire, completion of construction was delayed. In May 1903, only one apartment on the ground floor and Gorodetsky's own apartment were occupied. For the construction of the building, 1,550 m² of land was used at a cost of 15,640 rubles. The total cost of land and construction was 133,000 rubles. The estimated annual rental income was 7,200 rubles. To the left of the central façade there was an alpine slide (about 320 m² in area) with a fountain.

Due to financial problems associated with the safari hobby, in July 1912 Gorodetsky decided to mortgage his mansion to the Kyiv Mutual Loan Society.

The inability to pay interest on the loan led to the fact that in 1913 the estate with the mansion was sold by a credit society at auction. Ownership of the mansion passed to Daniil Balakhovsky, the French consular agent in Kyiv. In 1916, the house was bought by a certain Samuil Nimets, a merchant of the first guild.

After the October Revolution of 1917, the building was nationalized, and all apartments in the building became communal.

Since 1921, the building housed the headquarters of the military labor logging squad. Later, the new government placed the Veterinary Department of the Kyiv Military District in it.

During the Great Patriotic War, the building suffered significant damage and remained abandoned. After the war, the building was used as housing for actors of the Ivan Franko Theater. Then the Central Committee of the CP(b)U ordered the use of the building as clinic No. 1 for members of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U.