Travel Guide Kamyanets-Podilsky (Кам’янець-Подільський)

This fortified city is located near the Moldovan and Romanian borders. Access is fairly easy from Kiev, by a very convenient night train, but rather bad by other cities in the region. During the Soviet period, Kamyanets, as the inhabitants call it, was on the route of trains crossing Moldova and especially Transnistria, a region that currently escapes the authority of Chisinau and access to Kamyanets is complicated. It is a great pity because Kamyanets is really a little jewel in the Ukrainian Carpathians that wars have not spared. If Kamyanets suffered from the various princes who invaded it, the city was especially enriched by the seven cultures that gave it its specificity. Since the 11th century, Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, Turks, Russians, Poles and Lithuanians have lived together or succeeded each other in this city, adding architectural elements to the original city. A monument located near the fortress commemorates the diversity of cultures and the tradition of welcoming Kamyanets. The old town is located on an island surrounded by the Smotrich River, whose course now lies at the bottom of a canyon of about 30 metres - the city overlooking this void of cliffs and greenery as in a romantic poem of the 19th century. The size of the canyon is a major factor in the city's development, as the sheer cliffs give it a natural defence already recognized by the Romans, who would have been the first to inhabit the island.HistoryThe first references to the city date from the Chronicles of Kiev Russia, of which it was a part. In the 11th century, Kamenets was populated mainly by Ukrainians, with an Armenian minority, who had fled Armenia and migrated to the Crimea and then to the Carpathians. Kamyanets' rather distant position in relation to Kiev gives it the status of a principality. The great surge of Tataro-Mongolian troops on Kiev Russia in 1239 and 1240 spared Kamyanets in part. Especially the state that emerges from this surge, the Golden Horde, does not extend to this point. The city was then known for the skill of its craftsmen. Each trade is committed to showing its power and participating in the glory of the city; the various corporations raise funds to build the towers that can still be seen on the sides of the island. In the 15th century the power of the region was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the lords of Kamyanets accepted its suzerainty.The union of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the end of the 15th century brought Kamyanets into the era of Polish influence, but the city was already populated by many Poles. Polish domination was an opportunity to strengthen the city and its fortress in the west. The fortress, once composed of three towers, is decorated with several additional towers, the thickness of which was to serve as ramparts against the raids of the Tatars associated with the Turks. Religious life was also modified by the Polish presence, with the construction of a Catholic cathedral next to the Ukrainian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic churches. At that time the Jewish presence was quite high, but the mistrust of other communities pushed them to settle a little outside the city. They will only be allowed to enter the city with the arrival of the Russians in the region. At the time, the city was divided into an Armenian part, a Ukrainian part and a Polish part. The latter, the only one built of stone, is the one that has remained the most visible today. The Turks tried to take the city in 1621 but without success. They finally succeeded in 1673 after a month of siege and fighting. For 27 years, Kamyanets was a Turkish and therefore Muslim city; elements of this architecture are still visible, such as the minaret added to the Polish Catholic cathedral. In 1699, the Poles took over the city, which was then the symbol of the struggle between the Christian West and the Muslim East. The division of Poland between Prussians, Austrians and Russians in the second half of the 18th century brought Kamyanets into the Russian Empire. During the Ukrainian civil war, the city was for a few weeks the ephemeral capital of the Ukrainian nationalists. It was partly destroyed during the Second World War, but the old town did not suffer too much from this destruction. The new city is now trying to recover from the dismantling of the USSR and Kamyanets' tremendous tourism potential is beginning to develop.Kamyanets hosts an annual festival between June and August with parades and concerts, dedicated to the reconstruction of 17th century historical events. At the foot of the fortress, battles, banquets and old trades bring the past to life in a more than suggestive setting.