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Culture of Poltava


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The centre of the old city is a semicircular Neoclassical square with the Tuscan column of cast iron (1805�11), commemorating the centenary of the Battle of Poltava and featuring 18 Swedish cannons captured in that battle. As Peter the Great celebrated his victory in the Saviour church, this 17th-century wooden shrine was carefully preserved to this day. The five-domed city cathedral, dedicated to the Exaltation of the Cross, is a superb monument of Cossack Baroque, built between 1699 and 1709. As a whole, the cathedral presents a unity which even the Neoclassical bell tower has failed to mar. Another frothy Baroque church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos, was destroyed in 1934 and rebuilt in the 1990s.

A minor planet 2983 Poltava discovered in 1981 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named after the city.

Sports

The most popular sport is football. Two professional football teams are based in the city: Vorskla Poltava in the Ukrainian Premier League and FC Poltava in the Second League. There are 3 stadiums in Poltava: Butovsky Vorskla Stadium (main city stadium), Dynamo Stadium are situated in the city centre and Lokomotiv Stadium which is situated in Podil district.

Famous people from Poltava and its region

�    Marie Bashkirtseff � 19th c. Parisian painter, memoirist

�    Yitzhak Ben-Zvi � a historian, Labor Zionist leader, and the second and longest serving Israeli president.

�    Hanka Bielicka � Polish actress

�    Andriy Danylko � Ukrainian singer

�    Nikolai Gogol � writer and playwrighter

�    Alexander Gurwitsch � Russian physician and biologist

�    Ivan Kotlyarevsky � Ukrainian writer, poet and playwright

�    Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky � Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissar of
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