Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and current Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, announced a major cultural project. The Ambassador announced that next year, Ukrainian museums, together with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, will present a joint exhibition to the public. The focus will be on the return of ancient gates from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.
It is worth noting that we are referring to two pairs of silver-gilded temple gates (Tsar’s Gates) at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. These artifacts are unique monuments of 18th-century Ukrainian goldsmithing, which were stolen and taken out of Ukraine in the 1920s.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi announced the exhibition of the stolen gates of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra at the London Museum.
The gates were made around 1784 by Ukrainian craftsman Oleksii Timofii Ishchenko at the behest of Russian Empress Catherine II. They were intended for the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Now they will be exhibited in a famous London museum.
