At the end of Zhovtneva Street (the main street), you find the landscape is not measured by walls and bricks anymore. You see the horizon through a blue haze many kilometers away. And when you reach the Friendship Rotunda, you’ll see an easy slope and the houses of the low town below. People come here if they want to rest or if they have nothing pressing to do. Newlyweds arrive to drink champagne as they observe the majestic landscape. Recent graduates come to the Friendship Rotunda to greet the sun the morning after their graduation party.

Not far from Friendship Rotunda lies the Kotlyarevsky homestead, a house and several clay buildings covered with straw (including a woodshed and a coach-house). This is a museum, and everything inside is the same as it was two hundred years ago, a fragment of the eighteenth century inserted into the twenty-first. But two hundred years are a mere heartbeat for the town. In 1999, Poltava celebrated its 825th anniversary. However, the buses and shop windows proclaimed two anniversary dates--825 and 1100. Why? In 1998, archaeologists found proof that the town is no less than 1100 years old.

On the September 23, 1999, holidays began. Every town of Ukraine has its own holiday, a day that celebrates the town's liberation from the fascists. People crowded the streets. The president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma came to inaugurate the new buildings--a polyclinic for children, an art gallery, a bridge across Vorskla, and a memorial in honor of killed militiamen which consists of a chapel and a bronze sculpture of archangel Gavriil, the protector of warriors. Some people were very glad to see the president and greeted him. Others were skeptical about the motives of his "noble marathon" (visiting a dozen places in one day), seeing his presence as just a part of his pre-election campaign.

Different folk choruses and dancers performed in the central park and other places. Singers dressed like Cossacks sang Ukrainian folk songs. Souvenirs were sold from the benches: clay figures of fantastic creatures, wooden carvings, and pisankas (painted eggs).

No doubt the high point of the celebration was a four-hour show at the stadium "Vorskla"--opened by the president. First, a long procession went around a football field. It represented the history of Poltava from Ancient Rus to the present day and literary and historic characters connected with the region--such as Cossack leaders, Swedes, the writer Mikola Gogol, and Natalka Poltavka (a character in a play by Kotlyarevsky). Participants dressed in embroidered shirts traveled on horses and in carts. There were pop-singers and dancers. A biplane flew by, and soon several parachutists landed on the field. (This is a traditional event during the big holidays in Poltava.)