People’s Friendship Arch

The People’s Friendship Arch was constructed in 1982 and was originally intended as a symbol of unification between Ukraine and her Soviet overlords as well as the 60th anniversary of the founding of the USSR. Constructed of titanium and spanning 50 m (164 ft), it stands on a viewing deck with panoramas over the River Dnieper and was the work of architect I N Ivanov. Describing an arc – which is illuminated in the colors of the rainbow by night – across the skyline, the monument arches over a Socialist-Realism bronze sculpture by sculptor Aleksandr Skoblikov of Russian and Ukrainian workers holding up a unifying flag and a granite frieze detailing Ukrainian Cossacks pledging allegiance to the Russian Tsar in 1654, when the two countries first united. Ironically the uneasy accord between the two countries ended less than a decade after the monument was constructed with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A small fairground and a few beer stalls are sometimes found at the foot of the monument.