Kiev, Ukraine ? This hilly metropolis on the Dnipro River is as much about monasteries and monuments to 1,200-year-old heroes as it is about flexible Internet rates and fast food. It’s about embracing innovation from richer nations but proudly celebrating all that is Ukrainian, too.

Kiev’s main thoroughfare rumbles with rhythm on Saturday nights, as lone guitarists and amateur DJs replace Russian and German sedans on the chestnut tree-lined street. Listeners clink bottles of Ukrainian beer and bellow into cell phones as the music soars.

On Sunday mornings, the city’s focus shifts to the Monastery of the Caves, where tourists and Orthodox Christian pilgrims mingle beneath the gilded fixtures of the refurbished Cathedral of the Assumption. Later they wend silently through caves housing remains of monks dating back a millennium.

Since its heyday as the cradle of Slavic civilization in the ninth to 11th centuries, Kiev has spent time as a Mongol protectorate, a Russian and later Soviet provincial capital, a Nazi battleground and now as capital of independent Ukraine.

Kiev slowly is figuring out how to be a modern European capital. Its coming-of-age has been uneven, but it’s a good sign for Ukraine, which is still confused about where it’s going 10 years after winning freedom from the Soviet empire.

Many transformations

For a few weeks in 1986, Kiev was a twilight zone devoid of children, who had been evacuated in the panicked aftermath of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, 60 miles away.

For most of the 1990s, post-Soviet Kiev and its residents were scrounging for money, and many of its architectural and historical treasures were in shambles.

The columned Foreign Ministry building reflected the nation’s identity crisis: Just beneath the new blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag was a large hammer and sickle carved into the building facade during its days as Soviet Ukraine’s Communist Party headquarters.

Kiev had no top-quality hotels, prompting Bill Clinton and other foreign dignitaries to limit visits to less than a day. Restaurants were scarce, exclusive and expensive.

Today, the sagging boards that covered St. Michael’s Cathedral have revealed glorious frescoes. The hammer and sickle was un-engraved from the Foreign Ministry; in its place is Ukraine’s national trident.

People walk on the recently reconstructed central Independence Square in Ukraine's capital, Kiev. A white arch in the middle crowned with the sculpture of archangel Michael is a symbolic reconstruction of ancient gates, including one that led to medieval Kiev in the ninth to 11th centuries.

Restaurants for all pocketbooks and tastes line the center of town. More striking than the ubiquitous McDonald’s is the abundance of other low-budget options: Shvidko, which serves Ukrainian-style vareniki dumplings, cabbage salad and vodka, or Shelter, a cavernous place offering tacos, Chinese rice and vegetables, and “American-style” club sandwiches.

Adolescent girls no longer navigate Kiev’s steep streets in pointy high heels, pantyhose and short skirts, in imitation of their carefully groomed mothers. The girls now saunter in trendy bootcut jeans and thick-soled sneakers, in imitation of their Western counterparts.

Moving ahead slowly

Kiev still has a long way to go to reach the standards of Western Europe, or even of Moscow, which quickly shed its gray, Soviet image.

The city’s outer edges are dusty and colorless. Hotel options remain dismal, after plans by several Western chains drowned in red tape and graft.

The banks of the Dnieper river are seen from the hills near the World War II museum and a monument to Kiev defenders. The city was significantly destroyed during World War II, and new housing estates on the left bank erected during the post-war period house 2.5 million residents.

Most of Kiev’s 2.5 million residents remain poorer than they were under the Communists, and they speak more Russian than they do Ukrainian.

“Ukraine hasn’t moved beyond the Soviet idea. But Ukrainians have changed at their core,” says Volodymyr Simonov, a director at Kiev’s House of Fashion and a candidate in recent parliamentary elections with the Against Everyone Party.

Simonov first noticed Kiev fashion tastes growing more adventurous and sophisticated. Food and entertainment preferences followed. Political transformations, he predicted, are next.

Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko, who claims credit for most of Kiev’s physical improvements, is cursed by most residents as incurably corrupt.

Yet he won over critics with his decision to close down the city’s main drag to vehicle traffic on weekends.

By day, parents chase toddlers and roller-blading teenagers weave down Khreshchatyk street past caricature artists and tables heaped with pirated software. By night, young people congregate around huskers, singing along to American, Russian ” and Ukrainian ” melodies.