Before 2014, the Donbas offered several day-trip possibilities from Donetsk into the surrounding industrial and semi-industrial landscape. Most are not currently accessible. The region around Donetsk is mostly flat steppe, punctuated by the slag heaps (terykony) that mark old mining sites — an industrial landscape with its own austere character.
The city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea coast, about 120 km to the south, was accessible by road or rail in two to three hours. A significant port city with a steel industry of its own, it had a seafront, a small old town, and the kind of beach resorts typical of the Azov Sea in summer. It also has been severely damaged in the 2022 Russian invasion.
Svyatohirsk (Sviatohirsk), roughly 200 km to the north in the Donetsk Oblast, is a monastery town on the Siverskyi Donets river with cave churches cut into chalk cliffs — one of the more striking religious sites in eastern Ukraine. Before the conflict it was accessible as a long day trip or a short overnight.