Current Time in Chernivtsi, Ukraine

Chernivtsi stands in the far south-west of Ukraine, on the hills above the Prut River, close to the borders with Romania and Moldova. It is the capital of the Chernivtsi region and the historic centre of northern Bukovina, a wooded province at the eastern foot of the Carpathian mountains. The old town rises in terraces of pastel houses along steep cobbled streets, and the surrounding countryside of beech forests, orchards and villages remains one of the greenest parts of the country.

Around two hundred and sixty thousand people live here. The city is a regional centre of trade, light industry, food processing and education, and it is known for one of the largest open-air markets in Ukraine, which draws buyers from several countries. Its cultural importance far exceeds its size, since it has long been a meeting point of Ukrainian, Romanian, German, Polish, Jewish and Armenian traditions.

First mentioned in 1408 as a customs post of the Moldavian principality, the town changed hands repeatedly before passing to the Habsburg Empire in 1774. Under Austrian rule it flourished as the capital of the Duchy of Bukovina, gaining a university, a theatre, boulevards and grand public buildings, and acquiring the nickname of Little Vienna. Its large and creative Jewish community, which gave the world the poets Paul Celan and Rose Auslander, led to the city being called Jerusalem upon the Prut. After the First World War it became Romanian, then Soviet after 1940, and finally part of independent Ukraine, and the terrible losses of the Holocaust and the population movements of the twentieth century changed it profoundly. Remarkably, the architecture survived almost untouched.

Its outstanding monument is the former Residence of the Metropolitans of Bukovina and Dalmatia, a vast complex of red brick banded with coloured tiles, built in the 1870s in a style blending Byzantine, Moorish and Gothic elements around wooded courtyards. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and now houses the national university, so that students cross its cloisters every day. The city centre offers the Theatre Square with its ornate opera house by the Viennese architects who designed theatres across the empire, the pedestrian Kobylianska Street lined with cafes, the Armenian and Orthodox cathedrals, the wooden church of Saint Nicholas with its twisted domes, and the former Jewish People's House.

Cultural life is lively, with festivals of poetry, music and street theatre, a strong tradition of Ukrainian song, and a cuisine mixing Ukrainian, Romanian and Jewish dishes such as banush, mamaliga, stuffed cabbage and rich pastries. Trolleybuses and marshrutkas serve the compact city.

Railways and roads connect Chernivtsi with Lviv, Kyiv and the Romanian border, and an airport operates nearby. Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, founded in 1875, together with medical and technical institutions, gives the city thousands of students.

Chernivtsi is treasured as one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan cities of Ukraine, where central European architecture and a many-layered history survive intact.