In Kiev, you can walk up the stairs from the metro onto a square that’s been home to three revolutions in thirty years, and any number of protests large and small. With its memorials, monuments, and a few men dressed up in panda suits, Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) has become synonymous with modern Ukraine.

“For me, it’s Jerusalem,” says Sviatoslav Yurash, an activist who worked as part of an international public relations team for protesters during the 2013-14 revolution that toppled then-president Viktor Yanukovych, a client of Paul Manafort’s. “It’s the place that changed it all for me and for Ukraine.”

Five years ago this month, a series of protests started on the Maidan, prompted by Yanukovych turning his back on an agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. Almost four months and more than a hundred deaths later, Yanukovych fled to Russia, an act soon followed by Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and proxy invasion of eastern Ukraine. Today, the war with Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine drags on, a bloody backdrop to Ukraine’s preparations for presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

Walking here, it’s not hard to see why Yurash and other Ukrainians see the Maidan as hallowed ground. An exhibition with photos from the revolution surrounds the Independence Monument in the middle of the square. Men with megaphones promote tours of Yanukovych’s comically palatial mansion outside of Kiev, now property of the Ukrainian state.

For more, just walk up Institutska Street, which runs along the square towards Ukraine’s parliament. The cobblestoned road is lined with memorials to protesters. Flowers and red candles flank the faces and names of those shot dead by government snipers from the surrounding buildings on February 20, 2014—the revolution’s bloodiest day. The street has since been named after them, and closed off to traffic.