Pripyat, Ukraine
Pripyat was a city built to house workers and their families for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The city included housing for 50,000 people, a hospital (Pripyat Hospital No 126), a school, an Amusement Park (Pripyat Amusement Park), a swimming pool, and more.
In this article, we will discover what the iconic Chernobyl Amusement Park, with the famous Pripyat Ferris Wheel looks like today.
Jobs at the nuclear power plant were coveted across the Soviet Union as Pripyat was considered an ideal modern city to live in. A posting to Pripyat was considered enviable!
The city, which lies 100km from Kiev, was founded on 4th February 1970 and evacuated on 27th April 1986 (one day after the Chernobyl meltdown).
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The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
At just after 01:00 am on 26th April 1986 the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union exploded, sending a lethal cloud of radiation high into the atmosphere and across much of Europe.
The world’s worst nuclear accident was caused due to a series of botched safety tests and in large part to the plant’s unsatisfactory design. If you want to know more about it the book Chernobyl 01:32:40 by Andrew Leatherbarrow is a good start, as is the 2006 documentary The Battle of Chernobyl.
As a result of the accident, the city of Pripyat was evacuated and has been a ghost city ever since. It is possible to explore the uninhabited city of Pripyat on a Chernobyl tour.
Pripyat Amusement Park
The Chernobyl Amusement Park or Park of Culture and Rest as it was officially titled, was never used by residents of the city as it was due to open on 1st May 1986 (five days after the accident).
The park contains a large Ferris wheel, now synonymous with the deserted city, bumper cars, a parachute ride, a shooting range, and more. These rides now sit rusting as grass and shrubs grow through the cracked concrete floor.
Is the Pripyat Chernobyl Amusement Park Dangerous to Visit?
Areas of Pripyat Amusement Park are considered to have high levels of radiation. This is because helicopters taking away radioactive soil used the park as a landing ground. The residual soil was then washed into the ground. As with elsewhere in Pripyat, moss in the park can be highly radioactive so avoid going near it.
That being said, most tours include a visit to Pripyat Amusement Park, and provided you follow the advice of your guide and take precautions such as not touching anything, you should be fine.
Things to see in Pripyat Amusement Park
- The famous Pripyat Ferris Wheel
- Bumper Cars
- Parachute Ride
- Nature taking over
Other things to see close to Pripyat Amusement Park
Palace of Culture
The Palace of Culture housed a cinema, a large indoor basketball court, and a dance hall. The inside of the building has been ransacked and looks truly apocalyptic! From the basketball court, you can see the Pripyat Ferris Wheel and the rest of the Chernobyl Amusement Park through the smashed and peeling windows.
Azure Swimming Pool
The Azure Swimming Pool was used by plant workers and liquidators up until as late as 1998 (it was only reactor number 4 that suffered a meltdown, other reactors at the site were operational for many years after the disaster).
Pripyat Hospital No 126
Pripyat Hospital was used for staff and families of plant workers. It included an accident and emergency department, operating theatres and maternity ward.
Pripyat hospital was used to treat firefighters with radiation burns in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident. However, it was not set up to deal with such a situation, and eventually, patients were moved to hospitals in Moscow and elsewhere in the Soviet Union for treatment.
My Visit to Pripyat Amusement Park
The previous day’s tour of abandoned villages and the Duga Radar Station was excellent and I couldn’t have hoped for a more interesting experience, but today we were to be visiting the abandoned town of Pripyat and the reactor itself.
Our guide picked us up at 8 am and we had a quick breakfast at the now-familiar Chernobyl restaurant and drove to the 10km checkpoint. A brief bit of paperwork and we drove the few km to the outskirts of Pripyat. We stopped at the famous concrete sign marking the town’s boundary and got out for photographs.
Open grassland stretched in front with pine trees in the distance and a river running through the scene. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but every few hundred yards signs warning of radiation were placed ominously, giving the idyllic scene a surreal and foreboding edge. As we neared the signs the Geiger counter jumped into life and emitted its siren warning of the invisible enemy all around us!
The Red Forest
We moved on and the guide pointed to the forest on either side of the road. He told us that this was the Red Forest; a highly radioactive zone that received huge amounts of fallout after the accident.
All the trees and plants were taken away and destroyed and the ones here now are new, but the soil is highly radioactive and will continue to be for a very, very long time to come (thousands of years). Even in the van, the Geiger counter was screeching away giving levels of 40+.
Pripyat City, Ukraine
We entered the edge of Pripyat and stopped at a high-rise apartment building. We would be climbing to the top for sweeping views of the decayed city, surrounding countryside, and power plant in the distance. With a hangover and already hot sun, the climb up 20 stories was a little hard, but the reward at the end was well and truly worth it.
The view was spectacular. We had to come early when there were no police or soldiers around as we weren’t really supposed to be up there, but thankfully our guide took us to all the best viewpoints regardless.
It was incredible to see the forest eating at the town from every direction. The trees stretched to the horizon whichever way you looked, punctuated by the crumbling soviet apartment blocks and huge silver sarcophagus covering reactor 4 in the distance.
We descended the hundreds of stairs and drove on to the main square where I would finally get to see the iconic Pripyat Ferris wheel that was the unofficial emblem of the city. The square itself was overgrown with trees sprouting through the roads; something I had seen and read about in National Geographic many years ago.
Palace of Culture
We made our way across the square into what was the Palace of Culture; a complex of entertainment for the residents of Pripyat which included a sports hall and cinema.
I was intrigued by all the destruction and couldn’t see how even after 30 years of neglect the buildings would look so derelict. Sergey informed us that in 1990 everything of value was ordered to be removed and the rest vandalized. At that time no one imagined tourists would be coming to the site and they assumed no one would ever set foot there again. Little did the authorities know that a decade or so later, “dark tourism” would be a thing!
As we entered the main sports hall, through the empty window frames the yellow cars of the Ferris wheel sparkled in the early morning sun. I beamed from ear to ear as I stared at this monument to destruction that had haunted my dreams for so long.
It looked strangely new under the perfect blue skies and didn’t show the same signs of age and neglect as with everything else. The paint seemed to be as yellow as the day they were painted, but maybe it was just my own rose-tinted spectacles (or yellow-tinted, but you get the gist)!
Chernobyl Amusement Park
We exited the Palace of Culture and made our way to the rusting Pripyat amusement park. Sergey mentioned that the park never actually opened to the public as it was only completed a few days before the accident; a fact I was not aware of until that moment!
Dodgems lay rusting under their metal roof with plants and weeds growing up through the floor. Above everything, the Pripyat Ferris wheel stood eerily silent with the cars rocking slowly in the gentle breeze.
There is something sad about an amusement park built never to be used, never to hear the cries of enjoyment from children as they make their way from this ride to that. Frozen in eternity and doomed to an infinity of un-use amid this radioactive wasteland.
We wound our way back to the square through the trees that had grown around the town and made our way to the next destination on this whirlwind tour of destruction; the town swimming pool. Sergey said we were free to walk around and then go into the school next door and meet with him back at the van afterward.
Azure Swimming Pool
We made our way through the debris past changing rooms and to the poolside. It was a large place with a huge hole in the floor and diving platforms high above. Walking around I could almost hear the sounds of a lively swimming pool fading on the wind. Even though it was destroyed, it wasn’t hard to imagine in its former glory.
Pripyat School
The school next door was one of the places I was looking forward to seeing most, due to the thousands of gas masks littering the floors. Fighting off mosquitos, we entered the crumbling building where old schoolbooks were scattered on the floor amongst the gas masks.
It was a truly impressive sight. A dusty white clock on the wall with no hands marked the absurdity and timelessness of the place.
Pripyat Hospital
Next up was a visit to the hospital, though we would just be visiting as outpatients… This really was the stuff of nightmares and horror films. Operating tables lay among smashed glass and cabinets with medicines lined the rotting walls.
Rows of rusting metal beds could be seen inside rooms along the dark corridors. The maternity ward with its rusting cots in neat lines gave a chill down the spine. The undergrowth outside was clawing at the walls and making its way inside through the windows.
Reactor Number 4
We made a quick stop at the fire station with an old wheel-less Lada outside and then made our way out of Pripyat towards the reactor. The huge steel sarcophagus reared out from the trees and as we drove past our guide pointed out reactor number 3 which was adjoined to the large protective structure. Incredibly, reactor number 3 was actually being used to produce power up until the year 2000.
Warning signs and barbed wire covered the buildings around the reactors and we pulled up to one which housed the canteen for the plant workers. We were to be having lunch with plant workers no more than a couple of hundred metres from the site of the accident. It’s the only canteen I’ve ever visited where you have to pass through a radiation checking device to get in and out!
Inside women in white aprons and hats busied themselves serving plates of meat and bowls of borscht. We were told not to take any photos inside the building. Lunch was pleasant enough but I wasn’t too hungry so just stuck to borsht and salad.
After lunch, we drove right up to the reactor to take photos of the sarcophagus and monument. We were instructed not to take pictures of anything except the front of the sarcophagus; all the other buildings and reactors were strictly off-limits (though I managed to snap a couple of pictures from the moving van).
Cooling Tower
The penultimate stop on the tour was to a place where you can see a panorama of the plant, but the view wasn’t particularly impressive. As I stood taking photos a large red fox appeared by the side of the road and went down to a puddle to drink. Most of the wildlife that stalks these haunted woods had so far remained hidden, so I was pleased to see my first mammal of the trip, aside from the friendly dogs.
The final stop was to a cooling tower next to the unfinished fifth reactor. We parked in a layby and walked along an old disused railway track towards the towering chimney.
It was the first time I had been so close to one of these concrete leviathans. As we went inside the structure, Sergey told us to stick to the concrete areas and avoid the sandy bits with vegetation as this was highly radioactive; something confirmed to us by the wailing siren of my Geiger counter.
After walking the circumference of the cooling tower, we headed back down the railway track back to the van and out of the two exclusion zones. And thus ended the most intense, mesmerizing and enjoyable tours I have ever been on!
How you can visit Chernobyl:
Our partners at Get Your Guide offer an array of day and multiday trips to Chernobyl and the Pripyat Amusement Park from Kiev.
Check out my article on how to visit Chernobyl for more information or check out what the Exploring Kiwis have to say about it in their post What is it Really Like to Visit Chernobyl?
Although I recount my visit with awe, it’s important to remember there was a massive human and environmental cost. From the brave firefighters (the liquidators as they were known) to the children that suffered deformities and cancers, the effects of the nuclear disaster have taken a massive toll.
As such I have made a donation to the survivors and would urge anyone visiting to do likewise as it’s not just a theme park for the morbidly obsessed. If you wish to donate, you can do so here: Chernobyl Children International
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About the author:
Steve Rohan is a writer from Essex, England. He has travelled to over 60 countries, lived in China and Hong Kong, and is now living the digital nomad life on the road.
Steve prefers “slow travel” and has covered much of Europe and Asia by train, bus and boat.
Where I am now: Yerevan, Armenia 🇦🇲
Is it possible to look around without a guided tour?
Hi Diana, it’s not legal but people do. There are some good videos on Youtube of people sneaking in.