Field of the Battle of Poltava
A reserve on the 1709 battlefield that changed Eastern Europe.
Here, on 27 June (8 July New Style) 1709, the army of Peter I defeated the forces of the Swedish King Charles XII, on whose side Hetman Ivan Mazepa had come out. According to Ukrinform, the Swedes lost 49 to 57% of their army, and for Ukraine this battle remains a defeat to this day. The Museum of the History of the Battle of Poltava opened on 26 June 1909, on the eve of the battle's 200th anniversary, and in 1981 the museum and the complex of monuments were declared a reserve covering 720 ha. The exhibition has nine halls, including a diorama of 1959; the reserve contains St Sampson's Church, a mass grave of soldiers of the Muscovite army, the sites of ten redoubts and of the Cossack camp, and seven Scythian-era burial mounds. On 25 February 2025, after its removal from the State Register, the 1915 monument to Peter I was dismantled from the museum grounds. In June 2025 experts discussed a new name and concept for the museum without symbols of the russian empire.
Museum (32 Shvedska Mohyla Street): Tue–Fri 9:00–17:00, closed on Mondays; check the weekend schedule in advance by tel. 066 573 31 82 (Poltava Department of Culture website, checked 03.10.2026). The field is vast — it is easier to drive between the monuments. On the night of 25.09.2026 russian drones damaged three private houses in Poltava (Suspilne Poltava, 25.09.2026).