Please get the images of heavy metal devils out of your head this instant. Ukraine’s Iron Maiden has nothing to do with the band, although anyone who has seen it in person can agree that it is pretty metal.

A little bit of history:

This statue is actually called Rodina Mat (Motherland) and it sits on top of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. This museum is amazing and you could spend up to 3 hours inside and then there’s the outdoor area with tanks and helicopters. You can even climb inside some of them! Finally, there’s this massive sculpture that I definitely recommend you climb inside – unless you’re scared of heights.

Despite it’s nickname, this statue is actually made of stainless steel and it is 62 m (203 ft), 102 m (335 ft) if you count the height from the base of the main museum building. The base weighs 560 tonnes and the statue holds up a great deal of weight as well. The statue’s right hand hols a 16 m (52 ft) long sword that weighs 9 tonnes while the left hand holds a 13 by 8 m (43 by 26 ft) shield that you can stand inside!

While this is the highest view point in Kyiv, it is not the tallest point. The sword of this statue was actually cut because it was higher than the cross of the Pecherska Lavra – another great place to visit by the way, but more about that another time.

When we came to see the sculpture, we were just trying to visit the museum when we were told that there’s a special tour that can take us up in the shield. They said that only about 10 people do it a week and that it’s ‘only for the brave’. We laughed and said, ‘yeah, sounds cool.’ Only they weren’t kidding…

They strapped us to a harness and directed us up a series of ladders that went in all sorts of directions and were confined in a small tube. It felt like we were in a space ship and at one point I wasn’t even sure which direction was up! It was an intense and claustrophobic climb but it was so worth the view from the top. It was incredibly windy, so my footage is shaky, but it was truly spectacular and there is nothing else like it in Kyiv.

If you’re not scared of heights or tight spaces, I 100% recommend that you do this. Once you have, please let me know what you thought in the comments below: