Vinnytsia
— — a city the river bends around.
Not only on a wall.
“Vinnytsia sits where the Southern Buh widens through central Ukraine, a working city with a long medical tradition and a long musical one. The Roshen fountain rises off the river at night, said to be the largest floating fountain in Europe, with water arcing high above the surface to projected light and music. The Pirogov estate keeps the surgeon's library and chapel. Above the town the woods hide the concrete ruin of Werwolf, Hitler's eastern field headquarters. The city has carried a great deal since 2022 and still goes to work in the morning.
Vinnytsia, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Vinnytsia is the administrative centre of Vinnytsia Oblast in central Ukraine, set on both banks of the Southern Buh river, with a population of around 370,000 before the 2022 invasion. The first record of the settlement dates to 1363, when it was granted by the Lithuanian prince Algirdas. The city served as a regional centre under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union, and today is a key rail and road junction between Kyiv and the western oblasts.
The Roshen Fountain, anchored in the Southern Buh in front of Roshen Square, was commissioned by the confectionery company and opened in 2011. It is among the largest floating fountains in Europe, with a central jet reaching about 70 metres and laser and projection systems used for evening shows in the warm months. The river itself runs about 806 kilometres from the Volyn-Podillia uplands to its mouth on the Black Sea liman near Mykolaiv, and Vinnytsia's old hydroelectric weir still steps the current through the city centre.
On the south bank stands the Pirogov estate, where the surgeon Nikolai Pirogov lived from 1861 until his death in 1881; his embalmed body still rests in the small church on the grounds, and the manor is preserved as a museum of nineteenth-century medical practice. The Mury complex of fortified Jesuit and Dominican monasteries dates from the seventeenth century. North of the city, in the Stryzhavka forest, lie the demolished bunkers of Werwolf, Adolf Hitler's eastern field headquarters in 1942-43, blown up by retreating German forces in 1944.