The street, often advertised by tour guides and operators as the "Montmartre of Kyiv", is a major tourist attraction of the city.

[citation needed] On June 23, 2009, the Kyiv City Council administration approved the reconstruction of Andrew's Descent,[9] which was officially announced a year earlier by Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi.

[10] The descent's current name is derived from the 18th century, at the time when the Saint Andrew's Church was erected atop the hill.

[6] Although they are long gone due to the sweeping demographic changes[11] in Kyiv during times of the late Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the street is once again thriving thanks to its unique topology, architecture, rich history and also many gift shops and small art galleries showcasing various paintings and sculptures by Ukrainian artists.

[12] The street's location in the city and its landmark attraction has made it lately a highly prestigious area, with several new luxurious restaurants.

[13] The descent, located between two hills, is the shortest passageway from the historic Old or Upper Town (Ukrainian: Князівська Гора; Kniazivs’ka Hora) to the commercial Podil neighborhood.

[citation needed] In 1711, by the order of then-Governor of Kyiv, the route between the Zamkova and Andriivskyi mountains were expanded, thus allowing traffic to become more suitable for horses and wagon carriages.

[15] On April 9, 2012, construction workers began demolishing legally protected historic structures, even though earlier that year, their safety was guaranteed at several news conferences and the buildings themselves were included in scale models of the "renovated" descent.

The land was being redeveloped to make room for a new office and business complex to house Rinat Akhmetov's Kyiv operations.

[16][17] Several hundred protestors, including boxer/politician Vitali Klitschko, gathered outside the main Kyiv office of Akhmetov's SCM Holdings.

[15] Viktor Nekrasov named the building "The Castle of Richard the Lionheart", after the 12th century English king in his book.

It has been established that the modernized Gothic fronts were practically copied from a published design for a Saint Petersburg building by the architect R. Marfeld.

When Dimitri Orlov died in 1911 while building a railroad in the Russian Far East, his widow, left with five children, had to sell off the house to pay her family's debts.

In Bulgakov's novel The White Guard the author vividly describes the street and house[15] (he calls it Aleksey Descent - "Alekseevskiy Spusk") in the turbulent times of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

13 Andrew's Descent is still commonly called the Bulgakov House and displays a plaque with the address the writer used in his book (No.13 Alekseevsky Spusk) (see image).

[23] Another important part of the collection in the museum is the memorabilia of professors of Kyiv Theological Academy A. Bulgakov, S. Golubev, P. Kudryavtsev, F. Titov, A.Glagolev, famed doctors Th.

Book relics of the exposition include a famous Trebnik of the Metropolitan of Kyiv Petro Mohyla, rare editions of works written by professors and graduates of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, unique books written by the Ukrainian Walter Scott, M.Grabovsky, the Defender of Orthodoxy, A.Muravyov, and the works of Mikhail Bulgakov published in his lifetime.

One of them is the monument to Yaroslav the Wise, the Grand Prince of Novgorod and Kyiv, which depicts him holding a model of the Saint Sophia Cathedral.

[26] Most recently, in 2007, a monument to Mikhail Bulgakov was opened on Andrew's Descent, the first dedicated to the writer in the former Soviet Union.