SOFIYIVKA PARK

  The world knows many masterpieces of landscape gardening, and it takes a lot of courage to pick out one as a unique pearl. But speaking about the Sofiyivka we can say with certainty that it undoubtedly ranks high among them. Few works of landscape architecture can rival it in the amount of legends and romantic stories, which are concealed in its shady alleys, mysterious grottos, in formidable heaps of rocks. They unfold to those who know how to look and to listen. Now you understand why we invite you to roam through the Sofiyivka alleys, paths and glades namely in autumn.

  The idea to build a park belonged to Sofia her Count Stanislav Potocki, one of the richest magnates, fell in love with a beautiful Greek girl, Sofia. The world had not seen such a beauty. Count decided to recreate a corner of Hellas and to present it to his beloved wife, so that it would remind her of the mountains and woods, clear brooks and transparent lakes of her native land. Documents have retained for us the name of an engineer whom Potocki commissioned to create a park. It was Ludwig Metzel, formed Polish military engineer, a man of talent and great erudition. One has to process profound knowledge of an engineer, refined taste, great fantasy and skill to draw in his imagination and later to realize such fairy tale of woods and picturesque glades, ponds and fountains, terraces and alleys, grottos and pergolas.


  The inauguration ceremony took place in May 1802. Finishing touches were carried out later, of course, and even after the Count's dearth. But for all that we cannot but be impressed by the fantastically short period of time during which this green-and marble wonder appeared in the outskirts of Uman. Only six years! The Sofiyivka cost Count Potocki 2,000,250 roubles in silver. Visitors to the park were impressed with chaotic heaps of rocks over the Kamyanka; with the so-called Leucadian rock - a terrace from which a beautiful vista of the Sofiyivka opens; with the romantic Island of Anti-Circe, the Diana-Grotto, the Snake Fountain, the pensive calm of the Elysian Fields, the Tantal Grotto with a boulder handing threateningly over it, and with many other man-made wonders.

   The Main Alley lined with chestnuts and lindens runs into the distance, the alley leading to a fairy-tale world. Autumn has gilded crowns of old trees, yellowed leaves fall almost noiselessly as though sighing and rustle mysteriously under your feet. Maybe this rustle makes the beginning of one of the legends?.. The Alley brings us to the Lower Pond. We admire the slender outlines of the Flora Pavilion, then hurry to the Snake Fountain - you could look at it for hours. It seems that its iridescent splashes reflect the entire park.

  Several steps upwards and you are in front of another wondrous creation of human hands, the Island of Anti-Circe, called now the Island of Love, on the Upper Pond. The island built in the pond and covered with boulders look romantic though it arouses different emotions than the Thetis Grotto. By the way, even the contemporaries of the Sofiyivka inauguration noted that all the park's attractions were based on contrast, on swift changes of impression. The so-called Rose Pavilion dominates the Island of Anti-Circe. It was built by I.Makutin later, in the 1850s. White stucco-work which adorns it harmonizes delicately with the rose colouring of this light structure. What have this island seen for 200 years of its existence? Let's leave our fantasies for one of the numerous legends about the park....   The Valley of Giants is impressive with its chaotic conglomeration of granite boulders. It looks as though giants themselves really did build it, playfully scattering rocks and leaving some of them in such precarious positions that a gentle breeze would be enough to blow and start the boulders rolling again. A special place in the Sofiyvka belongs to the Styx River and Dead Lake. Our boat, departing from the Dead lake, quietly floats into an underground river. There are not so many rivers like that in this country. This one, a man-made canal going through the stone thickness, is unusual/ Even its name tunes a man to philosophic meditations and reminds of the transience of life…

  The underground Styx runs for 224 metres. Unlike the other, natural rivers in karst layers where pleasure trips are held, there is no artificial illumination there. Scanty dim sunlight forces its way through a few apertures in the granite ceiling. How mysterious the banks of this river look; it's even hard to imagine that they were laid out by human hands. Strolling through the park, now here, now there, amidst the thickets of bushes and trees, at the entrance to a grotto or on the bank of the pond, we unexpectedly come across white-marble statues of ancient gods and heroes or real historical personages. They blend with the surroundings so harmoniously that it seems that Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Euripides, all of them are alive, all are inhabitants of this fairytale park.

During the many years of the park's life restorers had to work a great deal for the statues to look so alive. It is considered that nature falls asleep in autumn, even dies. Only look how much solemn beauty and life strength there are in gilded crowns of old trees, how wise they seem to us in the period of their maturity. There are hundreds of species of exotic plants in the preserve. The English Park alone has now almost 150 species. Some faraway southern plants have been transferred here from the country's botanical gardens and from abroad quite recently, some were acquired by Count Potocki, but they haven't been preserved. Their numerous descendants, however, like the Italian poplar, Weymouth pine, or white acacia grow not only in the I park but have spread from here throughout the entire Ukraine.

Pensive maples and lindens, chestnuts and poplars, ashes and oaks, pines and fir-trees create the enchanting landscape of the park. The fine taste of the gardeners from many generations has enriched virgin nature and provided for the beauty of this green miracle. Numerous glades dotted with golden dandelions or purple violets fascinate our hearts. Nowadays the Sofiyivka Park is open to everybody who wants to remain with nature in private. You have only to turn off the broad alley onto one of the numerous paths, to linger on a light footbridge, to sit beside a murmuring brook, or to enter a dark grotto, and you'll find yourself in private with the Uman wonder. Maybe in that lies the power of real beauty, the power of genuine art. There is enough place for everybody who is able, or wants at least, to comprehend it, to be initiated into it. Among the many epithets, which the Sofiyivka Park has been awarded with, there is "the enchanted." Maybe, it's true?