“Let me ask you, would you go for a tourist attraction called Ghost Street? You can stand here all day long, and you never meet anyone, except perhaps a ghost. Do you think we mean a street in some abandoned mystical city? But in vain! For it is located in the capital of Ukraine - practically in the very center.., - said the author.
In general, Kiev is a unique phenomenon in this regard. Only in our city is it possible, for example, to get off the trolleybus and in two minutes find yourself in an impassable virgin ravine.
Only here you can walk along an imposing lane and suddenly bump into broken-down steps leading literally nowhere. The city has a lot of colorful, abandoned streets, and in terms of their number (and most importantly - quality), it certainly ranks first among major European cities.
Remember in Russian epics the Smorodinsky way is mentioned, on which a fierce serpent was in wait for lonely wanderers? So this path is still flourishing, only now it is called simply - Smorodinsky descent. It stretches from Nagornaya Street to Frunze Street. And as before, there is no better place to lie in wait for someone in Kiev. Although no, today Smorodinsky has worthy competitors. Take, for example, Lukyanovskaya Street, the one that connects Tatarka with the Zhitny market area. Next to her Olegovskaya winds serpentine. A couple of years ago, these places were the most picturesque slums in the whole of Podil. Recently, the rubble has begun to be cleared somehow, several new houses have appeared. So, exactly between Lukyanovskaya and Olegovskaya lies some mysterious street, it is not called in any way on ordinary city maps. Either Peaceful,or a "shoot" of Lukyanovskaya herself … In general, it is extremely difficult to understand. Well, and she looks absolutely fantastic.
Imagine a damp ravine as long and narrow as a gut. Even in sunny weather, there is always an ominous twilight. In the middle of the ravine - two meters wide cobblestones. Where it is clearly visible, where it is covered with earth. The steepness is decent, the streams murmur, but the birds do not sing. Maybe it's not a street at all? How! And the three houses, ruined, overgrown with bushes, what are they doing there? And the pavement, and the foundations from a dozen more buildings? It was her that we had in mind at the beginning of our story. In summer, when the vegetation is rampant, it is very difficult to walk here without a machete. And you know what strikes the most - the place is prestigious, in terms of Kiev scale - the most that neither is the center.
If you blindfold a person and walk him here from Lvovskaya Square, he will never believe that this can be. Five minutes just go! Would you like two minutes? From the same Lvov square. So you know, there is also Petrovskaya Street - it starts right under the House of Trade. At the beginning, it is paved, closer to the middle, it turns into a barely discernible path. And here no one walks, lives, does not sunbathe. Maybe once a day, a couple of homeless people will flash by.
And the famous alley above the hills along Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya Street ?! What a beautiful view of the old Podil, of the Dnieper! Apartments here are fabulously expensive. Kiyanovskiy lane runs a little lower than this alley. The contrast is stunning: the wilderness is hopeless, and at the end - the very steps to nowhere (they used to lead to the swamp). I categorically do not recommend going down them - you can easily break your neck. But nowhere else you will see so many doors to the famous Kiev adits - there are five of them. They look like the gates of hell …
The list of "lost" Kiev streets and lanes goes on and on. But this is not the essence of the question. It is clear that the described miracles are not included in the category of priority urban problems. This means that ghost streets will exist in parallel with the beautiful metropolitan life for many more years. Disadvantage, thorn? I would not say so. It is here, and not in the renovated fashionable quarters, that the spirit of that old, true Kiev, familiar to us only from photographs, from the literature of past years, is still preserved. It is here that you feel the variability of time, and at the same time the eternity of being.
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- So, maybe in the future it is not worth disfiguring what, in spite of everything, at the beginning of the XXI century in the capital of a European state remained beyond the control of a cynical and cruel civilization? - asked the author?
