• Морская слава Николаева
• Исчезнувшие памятники
• Эпоха революции
• Памятники, особенно дорогие нашим сердцам
• Южная муза

Many of Nikolaev's streets and squares bear the names of writers, composers, artists or other creative people whose lives connected them to our city. For some of those people, there are monuments.

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin traveled through Nikolaev twice. In 1820, he passed through en route to exile in Crimea. Later, in 1824, he was in the city again, this time en route to exile in Mikhaylovskoye. One hundred and sixty years later, in 1988, his visits to Nikolaev were commemorated by placement of a bronze statue of a young Pushkin, looking out at the Ingul River from a small park on the city side of the Ingul Bridge.

Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko traveled in this region and visited Nikolaev, spending three full days here on one occasion. A monument to him was erected in the center of Shevchenko Square in 1958.

Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov, better known as Maxim Gorky, came to Nikolaev under difficult circumstances. While travelling in the south of Russia, Gorky defended a woman in the village of Kandybino. Badly beaten in the process, he was brought to a hospital in Nikolaev to recover. His visit is commemorated by a bronze plaque inside the first city hospital.

The writer Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel spent the first years of his life in Nikolaev and is closely associated with the city. As a young man, he studied for a year at the Earl S.Y. Vitte Commercial College for Boys. The building where the college was located now houses offices of the bank "Aval." In August 2001, a memorial plaque with a bas-relief of I.E. Babel was installed on the front of the building.

In his role as an inspector of military bands, the Russian composer Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov visited Nikolaev twice, in 1874 and in 1881. In 1978, a marker commemorating the composer was placed on Admiralskaya Street.

Nikolay Nikolyevich Arkas devoted his life to the revival of Ukrainian national culture. He was an historian, ethnographer, educator, and composer. He founded the Nikolaev organization "Prosvita" and is recognized as its eternal leader. 83 years after his death, in 1992, his contributions were memorialized with a monument on Admiralskaya Street, where his house had been.

During his working life, Russian medical officer Danila Samoilovych Samoiloych made important contributions to the understanding of plague and was an early advocate for quarantine isolation of the sick. He died in Nikolaev in 1805. In 1969, on the 225th anniversary of his birth, a bronze marker was placed at the Leski regional hospital.

A physician is also commemorated at the first city hospital. Sergey Petrovich Botkin was a skilled diagnostician and legendary medical educator during the middle 1800s, a time of great medical progress. A marker at first city hospital remembers him as "the great Russian internist."

Nikolaev's zoo, the best in Ukraine, is known worldwide for its work with rare and declining species. Its symbol is the statue "Mowgli and Bagira," designed by Inna Makushina and erected in 1978 in the square at the zoo entrance.

Two monuments depict mythical characters.

Prometheus, who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to humans, is depicted in a stainless steel statue at the lodge of the "Kristall" plant. Workers at the plant created the five meter tall statue in 1978. The granite pedestal bears the words, "Give fire as Prometheus and do not grudge people the flame."

In July 1987 a sculpture of Icarus was unveiled during the opening ceremony for the "Kosmos" Cinema in Kosmonavty Street. In mythology, Icarus made wings bonded with wax and tried to fly. But the sun melted the wax and he fell into the sea. The sculpture of Icarus is made of stainless steel, 6 meters tall.



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