The estate of Dmytro Norov, Governor of Sloboda Ukraine and the first governor of the Kharkiv Governorate, is better known locally as the Saburova Dacha mental asylum.

Construction of the palace in the neoclassical style, designed by Pyotr Yaroslavsky, was completed by 1788, according to research by Andriy Paramonov. It is unclear why the complex was named after the Sloboda-Ukrainian governor Pyotr Saburov, who owned it only in 1798–99.

Unfortunately, both the palace itself, with its unusual semi-circular façade, and the service buildings adjacent to it are in a state of disrepair. The palace, which became the hospital’s administrative block, is currently not in use.

The palace is one of the few 18th-century buildings that have survived in Kharkiv.

Each of them undoubtedly requires the utmost attention.

After all, if we lose them, we will lose an entire layer of the city’s tangible history spanning a whole century, which we can still touch with our own hands.

Unfortunately, confidence that our children and grandchildren will be able to do this is fading with every passing year.

The mental asylum was moved to the complex’s grounds in 1820; countless articles have been written about its famous patients.

Locals still refer to the complex as ‘the Fifteen’, after the number of Psychiatric Hospital No. 15, which it used to bear in Soviet times.

The hospital is now numbered 3.

Fortunately, Saburova Dacha is a massive complex, and the most part of buildings of various architectural styles from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which are used by Kharkiv Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital No. 3, are in better condition.

For example, this building was constructed between 1898 and 1900; it was designed to accommodate 120 beds and 44 private rooms for patients. It now houses the Institute of Neurology, Psychiatry and Narcology of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine (Akademika Pavlova Street, 46 main building).

One of the buildings (hospital department No. 14) still retains its original window frames and the year of construction – 1888. 1956 is evidently the date of reconstruction.

This small building, however, is in the Art Nouveau style.

On one of the 19th-century service buildings, the Soviet sign ‘Universam’ is still visible.

The historic buildings of the psychiatric hospital complex were damaged as a result of Russian missile strikes on 27 April 2024. At the time of the strike, there were 900 patients in the hospital. They suffered severe stress from bombings.