The under-fire Ukrainian capital has roots dating back to the Stone Age, with human activity recorded in the region over 4,000 years ago.
Over the centuries Kiev grew into a cultural, scientific and industrial hub of Eastern Europe, at the heart of a trade route between Scandinavia and Constantinople.
Kiev has been completely destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over its ancient history, once during a Mongol invasion in 1240 and again during World War Two.
During the latter, the Red Army lost over 700,000 men and the Nazi's perpetrated the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust. In a ravine in the capital, up to 150,000 civilians were murdered over just two days known - as the Babi Yar massacre.
Kiev is thought to get its name from one of its legendary founders Kyi, Prince of Polans, building the city high on the banks of the river Dnieper.
Once the standard spelling by by those in the West, many media organisations now refer to Kiev by its Romanised version, Kyiv.
How to pronounce Kyiv?
Both Kiev and Kyiv have simple pronunciations, but are subtly different.
Kiev was pronounced by English speakers as KEY-EV, while Kyiv should now be pronounced as KEE-EVE.
Nina Jankowicz, former Ukrainian Foreign Ministry communications adviser, has spoken about the importance of correct pronunciation.
"How we describe Ukraine and Ukrainians and their cities is paramount to how the world perceives Ukraine," says Jankowicz.
"And part of that perception," she says, "is about you describing Ukraine as its own distinct entity, not as a part of this alleged sphere of influence that Vladimir Putin wants to resurrect, in which all Slavic countries are part of a giant brotherhood and he is the king of them."
Why has the pronunciation changed?
After Ukraine gained independence from Russia and the Soviet Union in 1991, official guidance was released for transliterating place names from Cyrillic to Latin alphabets.
These applied to all official documents and legislation, designed to make the name Kiev defunct.
At the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War which started with the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Kyiv became standard throughout the media landscape.
This is because Kiev stems from Russian, while Kyiv is Ukraine's own Romanised spelling.
Four years ago, the #CorrectUA campaign was launched to promote the official spellings of towns and cities by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Its aim was to correct outdated soviet-era monikers, which are harmful to the individual identities of former Soviet Union territories.
