Knight's House on Flickr
One of Kyiv’s most architecturally unique buildings is empty and decaying and likely to stay that way. The “Knight’s House” at Yaroslaviv Val 1, a phantasmagoria of mediaeval motifs including a castle tower and gargoyles – has been vacant for almost 10 years since its former communal apartments were dissolved and the building privatized.
“This is a gem of Kyiv’s architecture,” explains art historian and conservationist Natalia Musiyenko. “It was originally a luxury apartment block with splendid interiors, built at the end of the 19th century by Nikolai Dobachevsky, but it is suffering from criminal neglect.”
Read more: Kyiv Post
Sadly, there's little incentive for owners to fix up these historic properties. Since there is no property tax in Kiev, once someone owns a building, there is no additional cost to letting it sit vacant. Fixing historic buildings is costly; letting it fall down and selling the property to developers is profitable.
And there's probably a lot less bureaucracy to deal with when building on vacant land too.
Ahh, greed and bureaucracy. They rear their ugly heads again...
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