the restored villages of bessarabia, quaint folk houses of zaporozhye and the residential architecture of the village of vylkove, which stands right on the danube delta. on this territory there used to be promushyka veki. fromushika is beautiful, people lived here before the war.

this is the restored bessarabian village of frumushyka nova, reaching it is a real quest, because you need to drive for a good hour and a half through the endless bessarabian. tep, focusing only on signs in the form of shepherds, and then you enter a separate world, with recreated houses, a farm and a winery, museums, and of course, an inn with traditional bessarabian the kitchen since i was a child, i knew where my father and grandfather lived, and we used to go there every summer for 15-20 years. just children. grew up every year with my brother,

he with two children, i with two children, we went to frumushika. and exactly 60 years after the destruction, plus or minus 2-3 days. on june 6, 2006, the first shovel sank into the ground and we began to build a summer camp. the direction of development was defined as sheep breeding. this is how frumushyka nova began to recover. and already for...

bessarabia is a historical region that lies on the territory of modern ukraine and moldova, it has always been a place of intersection of different cultures, so here they decided to recreate the typical houses of all those nationalities that previously lived together in bessarabian villages. the uniqueness of bessarabia is that it is inhabited by more than 120 nationalities, and you understand that each nationality has its own customs. it is the culture, the cooking, the lifestyle that the family leads. and this idea was born: why don't we make a museum in the open air? and here is such a symbiosis of the territory with the customs of each nationality we united the moldavian, ukrainian, german, jewish, gagauz, and bulgarian obisia. that's it. to reconstruct houses traditional for bessarabia.

in the 19th and 20th centuries, a full-fledged expedition was carried out in the region. well, the moldavian countryside is as dad drew it. dad was born in 1933 . the soviet authorities and propaganda worked so hard that he became a completely soviet person. he even forgot the moldavian language. the soviet authorities resettled and separated them from their native land. there was another period when he... says: sasha, why do you need it? must, why are you doing this? and i say: dad, i want, i will glorify this place to the whole world, it is somehow, somehow like that. once he tells me that i will not be there for a couple of months, i will be in odessa, he lived in odessa, the apartment was there, but for the last 6-7 years he lived in frumushyk, and he says that i need to undergo an examination there, something there.

medical and i say: dad, take, please, draw a drawing of the house in which you were born. he, what do you think i won't come back? and i say: no, dad, well, i'd just like to know. he drew and went, for for two months he comes and the house where he was born stands, he cried, i cried, we had to drink a few jugs of wine to stabilize the situation a little, it turns out to be a museum, the houses all have an appearance. all the fillings of the moldovan house were brought by the residents, my employees, everyone wanted

to bring their carpet, everyone wanted to bring their wardrobe or a chair or some kind of table, we have a bazaar in odesa, an old horse market, it's like a flea market, always. loved to come on saturday sunday and see what people put up with sold, then we went to gagauzia and saw a typical gagauz house, we went south, i think, to the village of vyrodivka and saw a bulgarian yard, next to the gagauz and bulgarian yards there is also a jewish house.

the room is exactly like this, and this room is the master’s office, the outline of the ukrainian house was brought from cherkasy region, it is very easy to recognize it, by the wall painting that decorates the house from the outside and inside, the interior is still being renovated, today it is being renovated, but to the new tourist it is planned for the season to... read houses in bessarabia were built mainly of clay. they were built in the same way now, but if the houses were created almost from scratch, then the artifacts to fill them were brought from far away. it was planned that it would be possible to live in these houses, but the value of the reproduced

interiors and exteriors is so high that they decided not to give them away to the often careless tourists. therefore, today these houses are exclusively museum. exhibits, and others, simpler ones, were built for overnight stays. there is also a german courtyard on the museum street, its model was the existing house of the neighboring farm seven hundred. there are old photos, beautiful, interesting tables. khlosymysotka is no less interesting for its history and the processes that are taking place there now. if frumushyka existed for about 150 years, survived the second world war, and was destroyed in soviet times, then semisudka is

still a living village, although there are only two residents left in it. today, i am here with my neighbor, a retired woman, for today there are only two of us left here, that's all. a german lived here. and he had many hectares of land, something like 7,000 hectares, or not, i cannot say for sure, but this german gave people had jobs, all the local people worked for this german, his name was neshport, and the village was called seven hundred, later the soviet authorities evicted people from fromushika, in its place they created a military training ground, which was considered one of the... military facilities on the territory of the former soviet union, but the people who lost their homes still didn't want to go far, so they stopped nearby, in the village of seven hundred, and began to build houses here, because it was good to live here, there was an open space for people, a training ground,

a lot of space, there was a place to graze cows, sheep, sawing firewood, it was not for living here. and people started to build houses here, but ended up on the territory of the landfill. since it was the territory of... a landfill, they were told that it was not possible to live here, and they began to drive people away again, to send them somewhere to live, but people did not have the strength and money, after the war it was difficult to move somewhere again, to build, and so on they went to moscow to deal with this issue, so they no longer allowed to build here, but those houses that had already been built... so only

a few families remained to live here, in the middle of the bessarabian desert and near the landfill. from time to time they found training shells in their vineyards, but did not leave. my father built a house in 51, 50 or so, he started building, and that's how he lived here until he died, and i inherited this house. i certainly don't want to sell it. my parents are buried here. money is such a thing, and this is the parental home, it will be as it will be. time will tell, i know, it's bad here. no shop, no hospital, no, nothing. old age will come, i don't know how it will be here. maybe i'll go, maybe not, but i'm definitely not planning to go yet. semysotka today is also changing, if

frumushyka nova was conceived as a restored leisure village for tourists who want to take a break from the city, then the concept of semysotka is different: it should become a smart village with high-speed internet and solar panels on every restored house. smart village, because we tried to make a smart village. oleksandr andriyovych constantly, when i ask him... he says: that's it, anya, you'll see, i don't want to promise you, but you 'll see everything yourself. i have been in the village of semysotka every summer since i was a child. my aunt and yours lived there my own brother, my age. and, of course, they grazed sheep in the summer near fromushyk, where there was a military training ground, that is, there were shooting ranges, only in late autumn and early spring, at other times they were allowed to graze sheep. and so the children, starting at the age of five, there 5, 10, 12

years old, up to 14 years old, went out in the summer and took turns herding sheep, and here i was also herding sheep, so for me this is my native land, my childhood was spent here, the village was already dying out when we started the project in 2006, only five or six families lived here, and when we took on the seven hundred in the 20th year, there were only... three families. today, most of the buildings have already been restored, but there is still a lot of work to be done. with the onset of full-scale war, construction slowed, but was sure to continue. everything is ready in the house, all that remains is to deliver the furniture and connect the plumbing, and we just haven't had time yet. if in fromushyk , new houses had to be rebuilt from scratch, here it was enough to simply restore, everything

was like that, only the roof was changed and repairs were made, and so no redevelopment, the houses are as they were before, there is a garage, a basement and all houses in this style, oleksandr andriyovych said there will be a museum in this building. as i understood, he will collect photos of all the residents of the seven hundred who lived here before, we will look there, he said, we will also think about what will be there, according to the general plan, it should become a place where we could come for a while, live with our family, for example, the people of aitiv, in this way a small commune could be created in this place, where people... live, work, visit each other, share ideas, and when you want to relax, delicious

to eat or go fishing, only a few kilometers away is fromoshika nova. a village development plan has already been developed, one more street for 100 houses. there are still plans, but obviously the war is holding us back from implementing them, but i think the time will come. it is quiet there , for example, 100 people come to frumushyk, some want to rest, some want to have fun, if someone wants to rest, why not settle down in the semi-hundred and rest peacefully... quietly sipping wine or tea from medicinal plants that we grow in the steppe, and do not enjoy it peace of mind, we have a medicine for nictura, there is an association, fromoshika nova

today has become a family affair, a farm and a winery... children are already being looked after, there is a staff that monitors the houses and the museum, something new is constantly appearing on the territory, the wine yogi, then a museum of agricultural machinery, then a park of stone sculptures created by artists from all over ukraine, and here they installed a giant monument to chaban, the largest monument to chaban in the world. where did the idea come from? there was once a tribe, i saw it when i was on an excursion on easter island there are these buildings, i thought, how come, the tribe disappeared, but it left something behind, and why can't we do something similar in frumušytsia, especially since this is a monument to chaban, now we say that it is a monument the ancestor of my grandfather, the shepherd is a truly special figure for

bessarabia, since sheep breeding is centuries old . it was originally designed as a 12-meter, and they confirmed, started a personal case, but we built it, we got 1794 together with basically, worked on the advance. for some reason , they decided that it would be better to make it bigger, and so it turned out to be 1793 or so. 4 cm, 1170 tons, this is together with the foundation, in the winter of 2016 the monument was entered into the national register of records of ukraine, and in 2017 it was registered in the guinness book of records, but the monument is impressive not

only by its size, but also by the material from which it is made . the monument itself is granite made with labradorite. 5 tons, well, 30 tons, 40 tons are being loaded from above, and at this time the car is just before my eyes, it starts to sag, oh, it was a lot interesting although fromušytsia nova is usually sparsely populated in winter, in february 2022, it was filled with people and became more than just a tourist attraction. now, when the war

started. already on the second day, on the evening of february 25, there were more than 60 adults here and... this is an example of traditional architecture, i am an odessan who is used to the steppe, the sea, so

if this is a traditional southern division, it struck me, namely this is a village that... is called odessa carpathians or odessa switzerland, when i got here to these hills, i looked at this architecture, very i liked it, i decided to buy a cottage here . while traveling with the expedition, we heard many stories of young couples who moved to the village from big cities, but each of them had their own motivation: someone moved to restore their parents' house, which was standing empty, while someone , on the contrary, never had their own childhood memories of life in the village. and wants to create them at least for his children, someone like dmytro with hope was inspired by the idea of ​​preserving the traditional culture of a certain region, which is slowly being lost. we met in this house of ours, we will find. in 2008, i the ivan hanchar museum organized an expedition and very beautiful girls came and among them nadya was the most beautiful, here we are in this house

conducting an expedition to study traditional cultural heritage, we met nadya and in the same year we decided to be friends and have a traditional wedding of this region, we... two city dwellers moved to the village and started farming. the idea, which began with the restoration of the ethnic homestead, eventually grew to its dairy production and another 6 hectares of its own farm. but the most important property remains precisely the houses that managed to be preserved, and the knowledge about them, which was collected throughout the region. this is a unique village in that everything is built from this kind of rubble, stones, limestone, very hard, very strong, that's because here everywhere under the layer

of earth, everywhere it is even on the surface, these layers of limestone, they used to be beaten by stonemasons , and everyone built houses and everything related to the economy from these stones, here is this ravine higher up the ravine. they beat this stone, and when a very strong downpour washes away a very strong stream from the fields the stream flows, it is called let's place the cloud, and it brings these stones from above, you see, this is scattered, it is all brought from there. here, these stones used to be bound with clay, but if it was not at hand, they made chamur, that's what they call chernozem mixed with water. this house, for example, is built. that's why. from the village of hrabove to the clay border, the stones were fastened with earthen moldova for less than 10 km, so historically

not only ukrainians, but also moldovans lived here, which, of course, influenced the local architecture. this is a region on the border, so there is a kind of regional culture here, this northern division meets transnistria, with the influence of moldova, its own is formed. such a unique and regional culture, here on the border, for example, in the house there is a large room, a hall, maybe, in some regions it is called, there the family gathers, for dinners, for christenings, for weddings, for some worlds, this hall here in our village it is called kasamara, translated from moldavian it is a big house, this house was built by a moldovan, grandfather dimitru, this is what they told us, and grandmother vera, that's how oral tradition told us about it. most likely, it was built before the second

world war, that is, somewhere in the 30s, but it was rebuilt many times, because the owners of this building changed, and accordingly, they completed the second half already after the war and completed it in the 60s. before the second world war, all roofs in the region were covered with rye straw, as everywhere else, after the richest houses began to be covered with a prototype of slate. these squares were very thin, this house was ours before the reconstruction the house, the second house, it was so covered with tiles, and my grandfather remembered what he said, everyone ran from this neighborhood, from this area of ​​the village, it is called, by the way. here magala was running and looking at how the roof is so thin, so thin, so thin, and the rain does not reach the attics, because before everything was very

thick from rye straw, and then after the war such a small workshop appeared in this village, who made such cement tiles, appeared later, the roofs were mostly covered with slate, when dmytro bought the hut, it was in a dilapidated state, therefore, before moving in... it first had to be reconstructed a bit and add conveniences, the sewage issue was solved, water was brought in, the interior was modernized, but all the main traditional elements of the local architecture were still preserved. for example, we photographed this front door in a traditional house and it was recreated by a modern carpenter. this is the decor of this front door. dmytro lives with nadiya and children in the same house, and

tourists come to the bilochi ethno-mansion to... act, but now we are in this house, which was built before druga of the world war, if a traditional, traditional house, it should consist of two, of two halves, this barracks, a cold half and a warm half, where people spent the winter, where the stove stood, well, but it was already here at the time when we bought house, it was no longer there, so if we tried to... preserve as much as possible what was there, but make it so that people could rest comfortably here. well, from a traditional and very ancient time, i draw your attention to this window, you see, this window, which i understand to have a ritual function, it is not for lighting, here are these windows for lighting, this is a window, it faces the setting sun, this is a window through which the souls of the dead come

and... the dead leave, this is such a ritual function, this is traditionally furniture that we collected seli, they are called scoops, you see, you can keep them like in a chest and sleep on them on these sofas, this is the tree of life, the main symbol that is present everywhere in traditional weaving, embroidery, this rug for more than 100 years. clearly, because already in the 20th century with such an ornament they didn't do it, and it's just very burnt out, but it was also dyed with her vegetable dyes, so i bought what was left from people, and here you see, the blue is real indigo, the dyeing was done here by the jews, all the women who were engaged in weaving, they drove here in moldova, there are such very ancient ones.

the rashkiv stream, that's where the rashkiv jews were engaged in forming threads for these kilometers. over time , the fascination with local culture grew into a large-scale ethno-festival, which was attended by people from all over ukraine. the idea was to to open in general, in general that unique, traditional. the culture of the southern division of kodem oblast, which no one knows about, scientists always say, well, odesa, odesa is a white spot, there is nothing there, everything is russified there, nothing is russified here at all, here is a unique culture, here it is traditional, in the neighboring village it has been preserved almost to of our time, a completely traditional outfit that only existed in this village, unique cuisine, unique architecture, unique traditions,

weddings, rites... blacksmithing, wedding, christening and so on, that's all we wanted to show at this festival, and tried to do that for the first few years while we were doing it. with the beginning of a full-scale war, dmytro and nadia's business began to experience a serious crisis: tourism disappeared, ethnic plantations began to be empty, and the number of orders for dairy and cheese products fell to a minimum. i am now appealing for everyone. can help support our production. unfortunately, there are hundreds of such stories in ukraine today. small and medium-sized businesses are closing, people are losing their jobs, but at the same time, architectural landmarks are also being lost, which barely had time to restore. unique houses and villages continue to disappear. this is the internal front. and this needs to be understood. if we just can't hold it now, we'll turn, well,

what should we do? and let's just leave it all, it will also be overgrown with brambles, it will be stolen, this is our ten summer work, it will, well , go to the sky, that's all. somewhere , old houses are being demolished all the time, and somewhere rockets and artillery shells of the occupiers. we didn't get in because of the russian occupation. many places that we wanted to tell you about, for example, the house and museum of the artist polina raiko, in oleshki, kherson oblast, and about the popov farm reserve museum, in vasylivka, zaporizhzhia, with the beginning of a full-scale war , we ukrainians realized that our houses, our churches, our palaces, all our cultural heritage were also under the sights of the occupiers.