The best photo of Kherson Oblast in 2025 at the international photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments was the image of the built-up area of the historic center of the city of Nova Kakhovka.
The author of the photograph – photographer Oleg Marchuk.
This was reported by the organizers of the Ukrainian part of the “Wiki Loves Monuments” contest.
The photo was taken on January 5, 2021.
It depicts an urban planning monument of local significance, protection number 115-Хр. It refers to a coherent complex of buildings between Dniprovskoho Avenue, Mayakovskyi, Heroes of Ukraine and Pershotravneva streets, within the park zone and the stadium; erected during 1951—1956. The Old Town — the historic district from which the whole city began. Built according to a single plan from the very beginning. At the core of the development are 2- and 3-story houses with tiled or slate roofs. Many houses are decorated with ornamental panels in the technique of carving into wet plaster, created by the artist Hryhoriy Dovzhenko — one of the pupils of Mykhailo Boychuk. They are called “stone vyshyvankas”.
«I’ve photographed much of Ukraine; I want the world to see the photos and for Wikipedia’s materials to be well illustrated. And monuments are a special love and at the same time a pain, because many of them are disappearing or have disappeared after I photographed them…», — shared his motivation for participating in the contest Oleg Marchuk.
Nova Kakhovka was founded on February 28, 1952 on the site of the village of Klyuchove. The city was built simultaneously with the construction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant as a town for hydro-construction workers. In 1958 the old part of the city was listed among the world’s architectural monuments as a city built according to a single plan. There are few such cities in the world besides Nova Kakhovka, notably Brasília. In 1991 the Novokakhovka Local History Museum opened. Since February 24, 2022 the city has been under temporary occupation by Russian troops, and on June 6, 2023, due to the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP, Nova Kakhovka was flooded up to the city center…
The built-up area of the historic center of Nova Kakhovka not only represents Kherson Oblast for the first time, but is also presented in the contest for the first time at all. Among other monuments in previous years were: the Ochakiv Gate of the Kherson Fortress, the walls of the Korsun Monastery, the vault of the Falz-Fein family in Novochornomorya, the All Saints Church in Kherson, the walls in the village of Korsunka, the building of the former bank of the Society of Mutual Credit, the monument to Major General Synelnykov, the hillfort “Skelka”, the Dzharylhach and Stanislav lighthouses and the Kherson Yacht Club.
As of 2025, the list of monuments of Kherson Oblast includes 1,854 cultural heritage objects, 456 (24%) — have photos on Wikimedia Commons. In 2025, 10 participants uploaded 101 photos of 44 monuments (photos of 9 of them were uploaded for the first time). Over the years of the contest, 163 people have submitted works with images of the region’s monuments.