Jonathan Campion (jonathancampion.wordpress.com) has recently moved to, and become bewitched by, this special district of the Ukrainian capital. Here he gives us a quick tour

Independence Square in the snow. Photograph: Jonathan Campion


Since last spring I have been living in Kiev's Arsenal'na district, which lies between Maidan Nezalezhnosti ('Independence Square') and the right bank of the river Dnieper. It is one of the city's most attractive areas, scattered with lush, sweet-smelling chestnut trees and punctuated by dozens of landmarks.

It is home to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra (the Kiev Cave Monastery, completed in 1015), a guardian of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, behind which stands the Rodina - Mat' (Motherland) statue, her thick, silver arms and sword thrusting defiantly - and symbolically - at the sky.

Both structures are faithful remains of the destroyed empires of which Kiev was once a noble and influential part: Prince Volodymyr's Kyivska Rus', from which Russia grew in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the Soviet Union, which fought the Second World War heroically and to which the museum beneath the statue is dedicated.

Ukraine's modern ambitions also thrive in Arsenal'na: the ten minute walk from the metro station to my flat takes me past restaurants that serve Czech and Vietnamese food, as well as the tiny café Alfredo (with room for two people), an ice rink, a De Beers boutique, and the city's most imaginatively-stocked "Sil'po" supermarket.

Further along Vulytsya Ivana Mazepy - a street named after Ivan Mazepa, a seventeenth century Cossack leader - is Park Slavy ('Victory Park'), where many people gather, either to sip beer and enjoy the view in the evening, or to lay wreaths beside the war memorial at the park's highest point.

The view from the memorial is one of my favourites in Kiev. It stretches from the steep grass slope that runs into the Dnieper, to the light blue metro trains that slide over the bridge, to the thin yellow strip of beach at Hydropark, to the new office buildings and housing blocks of Livoberezhna, to scruffy Troeshchina and Darnytsya beyond them, to the hazy outline of Lisova on the horizon - the very easternmost edge of the city.

Check out more travel stories on Jonathan's blog: jonathancampion.wordpress.com