It is considered the most prestigious university in Ukraine[4] and a major centre of advanced learning and progressive thinking.

[5] It consists of more faculties and departments, and trains specialists in a greater number of academic fields, than any other Ukrainian educational institution.

Students and lecturers rebuilt the Humanities and Chemistry buildings and by 15 January 1944, classes resumed for senior undergraduates and for first-years on 1 February.

[8] Since 1960, when the first international students were admitted, over 20,000 highly qualified specialists have been trained at Taras Shevchenko University for 120 countries.

The first foreign students of the Taras Shevchenko University came from Cuba, Guinea, Indonesia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Zanzibar, Yemen, Algeria, and Afghanistan.

During the Russo-Ukrainian war, several buildings of the university's Institutes of International Relations and Journalism were damaged in a Russian drone attack on 3 November 2024.

Now the main building (built 1837–42 by architect V I Beretti) can be found at 60 Volodymyrska Street, whilst a number of humanities departments are located at 14 Shevchenko Boulevard 14 (formerly the First Kyiv Gymnasium).

Local tour guides sometime state that Tsar Nicholas I ordered the entire main building painted red in response to student conscription protests during World War I to remind students of blood spilled by Ukrainian soldiers.

Built at the top of a hill, this building has significantly influenced Kyiv's architectural layout in the 19th century.

The total area covered by the garden is around 5.22 hectares; it has a collection of over 10 000 species, forms and varieties of plants.

The gardens are located at the city centre campus, to the rear of the red building; the nearest metro station is Universytet.

The building initially belonged to the First Gymnasium (a grammar school, in which M. Berlin and M. Kostomarov taught, and where students included the artists Nikolai Ge and V. Levandovskyy, historian M. Zakrevskii, economist M. Bunge, poet M. Herbel, sculptor P. Isabella, writers Bulgakov and K. Paustovsky, and future academics E. Tarle, A. Bogomolets, and A. Lunacharsky).

The Maksymovych library – along with the No.1 branch of the National Library of Ukraine (62 Volodymyrska Street), designed by the same architects in 1929–1930, and the main ("red") building of the university – forms part of an important and impressive architectural ensemble which is today considered one of Kyiv's key collective architectural monuments.

In the 1960s it became imperative that the Kyiv National University acquire more space for its greatly expanded number of departments.

The Institute of International Relations and Institute of Journalism's joint building at 36 Melnikova Street, developed by Kyivproect architects O Nosenko, I Shpara, Yu Duhovichny, O Klishchuk and Y Vig, was awarded the State Prize of Ukraine in the Field of Architecture in 1995.