Planetarium and cinema lecture hall in Kherson returned to the state

Thanks to the work of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor's Office, the building of a planetarium with a movie lecture hall in Kherson has been returned to state ownership.

According to Vitaliy Nikitin, deputy head of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor's Office, in 2019, prosecutors found that the property was illegally registered to a non-governmental organization. In September 2022, the owner of the property officially renounced his claims to the property. Although this decision was formalized in accordance with the law, the case continued.

"The mere cancellation of the property right did not provide legal grounds for the state to register the property right," Nikitin explained.

Eventually, by a ruling of the Southwestern Economic Court of Appeal dated December 9, 2024, the prosecutor's claims were satisfied in full initially.

According to Tetyana Zhakun, Director of the Department of Legal Policy and Quality of the Kherson City Council, this object is of important social, cultural and educational importance, is a business card of Kherson and a symbol of its history. This house was built around 1780. It was a part of the Kherson Jewish household, and before the revolution it housed the Old Mykolaiv Synagogue. In 1928, the synagogue was closed and converted into a gym, and later into a planetarium.

The House of Sanitary Culture in the 1930s and 1940s. Photo: Wikipedia/author unknown

"The building in the central part of the city is an important architectural landmark and a unique cultural and educational facility. The Kherson Planetarium is one of six similar ones in Ukraine and the only one in the south of the country," she added.

Earlier, representatives of the Department for the Implementation of Humanitarian Policy of Kherson Regional State Administration together with specialists from the Kherson Regional Museum of Local Lore and the Inspectorate for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments visited the Kalynivka community to check the state of historical and cultural heritage.

Before that, an exhibition dedicated to the crimes of the occupiers against the cultural heritage of the region was opened for children in the central library of Kherson. The exhibition featured documentary materials telling about the losses of libraries during the occupation of the region. And IDPs from Kherson presented the cultural heritage of the region, theKherson Kuren, at the Saksaganskii Format autumn fair in Kryvyi Rih.

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