Lesya Ukrainka was Ukraine's greatest 19th-century poet, and like Chekhov she came to Yalta for her health — tuberculosis drove her here in 1897, and she returned several more times in the following decade. The museum occupies the dacha where she stayed during her Yalta periods and documents her life, her illness, and her work.
Ukrainka (born Larysa Kosach) was a remarkable figure: she wrote poetry, plays, and essays in Ukrainian at a time when the language was actively suppressed by the Russian imperial government. Her play "The Forest Song" is still performed widely in Ukraine today. For Ukrainian visitors, this museum carries particular cultural weight; for outsiders, it offers a window into a period of Ukrainian literary life largely invisible to Western readers. The parallel with Chekhov's dacha — two great writers, the same disease, the same city — is striking.