The museum of UPA Corporal Roman Shukhevich, which was destroyed by Russian shelling on the night of January 1, 2024, will be restored. Already in February, the Lviv City Council plans to announce an architectural competition. Experts insist that the object should combine both authentic and modern elements.
According to the mayor of Lviv, Andrii Sadovoy, even before the full-scale war, the museum’s exhibits were scanned and a virtual tour became possible. Now it will help a lot in the further restoration of the object.
“During the month, we will conduct a number of serious works with environments, with architects, and in February an international architectural competition for the museum project will be announced. He will, of course, take into account the authenticity that is here, this is very important. But there will also be a modern approach, because it is necessary to make an entrance for people with disabilities so that a person in a wheelchair can enter.
The next stage is designing. It will be necessary to make a high-quality project, it will take some time, because the competition itself will last about two months. When the project is ready, we will understand how much money we need for restoration.
I want to thank all the benefactors who are contacting with an offer to help. If you have funds for aid today, I think Shukhevych would say: “guys, if you have money, give it to the Armed Forces, give it to weapons, because today we need it the most.”
We will definitely restore the museum. I think that after the war it will be one of the main objects to which we will devote time, attention and energy,” Andriy Sadovy said.
The building has historical significance, it is under the care of the Lviv Historical Museum. Whether they will be able to restore the building or whether it will have to be rebuilt will be decided based on the results of research and an architectural competition. Specialists of the city’s architecture department, together with museum staff, will work out the project tasks for the announcement of the competition.
“This object is connected with history, with the figure of Roman Shukhevich himself. There was a hiding place, there was a trace of a bullet. That is, we have specific artifacts and a specific location that is closely related to historical events. Therefore, we want to preserve it as much as possible, and what is possible – to reproduce it in new forms. But it should be a delicate object that will fit the environment in which it is located.
Surviving remains may be subject to replenishment. There are a lot of examples in world, European architecture, where even the remains of the first floor are supplemented with new forms already with the solution of the issue of inclusiveness, normal exhibition space, lighting. So that each exhibit takes its logical place,” said Anton Kolomeytsev, head of the Architecture and Urban Planning Department of the Lviv City Council.
Before the start of the full-scale war, the Roman Shukhevych Museum had several hundred original exhibits. After February 24, 2022, the museum was closed and all exhibits were moved to a safe place.
“This museum did not work for 16 months. But there was a public demand for the restoration of the museum. Therefore, we restored the exposition, mainly returned the furniture here – a table, chairs, an armchair, a credenza, a piano on which Shukhevych played.
As a result of the fire caused by the explosion, 16 monuments belonging to the museum fund of Ukraine were lost. Another thing is that there were many monuments from the scientific and auxiliary fund – this is not a museum fund of Ukraine, they do not have such a special value: they were dummies, copies of documents. That is, from what was initially and to what has been lost, the percentage is tiny. But here you can’t operate with numbers, you can’t operate with percentages – this is all our heritage, these are things that have a memorial nature, which were related to one of the Heroes of Ukraine – Roman Shukhevych. This loss is huge for our history and culture,” said Roman Chmelyk, director of the Lviv Historical Museum.
We will remind you that on January 1, 2024, Russian Shaheds hit two objects of national memory in Lviv: the university in Dublyany, where Stepan Bandera studied 100 years ago, and the Roman Shukhevych museum in Bilogorshche. In addition to the university and the museum, neighboring buildings were also damaged. In Dublyany, the shock wave blew out windows in dormitories, a hospital, a chapel, and residential buildings. And several private buildings were damaged in Bilogorshche.