The original site of Shevchenko's burial is the Smolensky Cemetery in St. Petersburg and later his body was moved to the banks of Dnieper.

The hill formerly belonged to Kaniv's Holy Dormition monastery (Eastern Orthodox) that existed here since the 11th century.

Due to the 100th Anniversary of Shevchenko birth, in 1914, the Russian government dispatched gendarmes and Cossacks to prevent pilgrimage to the burial.

It was on the Taras Hill that Oleksa Hirnyk burned himself to death in protest of Soviet suppression of the Ukrainian language, culture and history in 1978.

At present, the mount belongs to the Shevchenko National Reserve dedicated to the poet and is a place of mass visits from all over the country and abroad.