Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Tours
A respectful guide to visiting one of the world's most unique historical sites.
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, created after the catastrophic nuclear accident of April 26, 1986, has become one of the most unusual tourist destinations in the world. Visiting requires a licensed guide and advance registration, but the experience is profoundly moving.
The ghost town of Pripyat, built to house workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was evacuated within 36 hours of the disaster. Today it stands frozen in 1986 — an amusement park with a Ferris wheel that never opened, apartment blocks where personal belongings still sit on shelves, and a school gymnasium where gas masks litter the floor.
Tours typically include the plant itself, where you can see the New Safe Confinement structure built over Reactor 4, the site of the explosion. The scale of the engineering feat required to contain the disaster is staggering.
The zone has become a strange sanctuary for wildlife. Without human interference, populations of wolves, lynx, wild boar, and even Przewalski's horses have recovered dramatically, making it an accidental nature reserve.