Tunnel of Love in 3D: Follow Ukraine's Green Railway

A freight spur near Klevan, in northwestern Ukraine, has been trimmed into an arch of leaves by its own passing trains. Here is how to follow the whole corridor in 3D with live Street View, right from your iPhone.

Between the village of Klevan and the small town of Orzhiv, in the Rivne region of northwestern Ukraine, a single-track railway runs through dense forest. It is not a tourist line. It carries timber to a woodworking plant, a few short trains a day, and it has done so for decades. In that time the passing wagons have clipped the branches on either side into a smooth arch, and the canopy has closed overhead. The trains cut their own tunnel, and the tunnel is the exact shape of a train.

Standing inside it is another matter. Ukraine has been at war since the full-scale invasion of 2022: civil aviation is closed, martial law is in force, air-raid alerts interrupt ordinary days, and most governments advise against travel. Even in quiet years this was a place with no station, no ticket and no signpost — you asked directions in Klevan and walked out along the ballast.

For now, the honest way to see it is from above and along, in three dimensions, on a screen. You can trace the whole green corridor today, from the last houses in Klevan to the sidings at Orzhiv, without leaving your chair.

What makes the Tunnel of Love special

The line is an industrial spur across the flat, wooded country of Volhynia — sandy soil, birch and hornbeam, drainage ditches, small farming villages. Nothing about the geography is dramatic. What makes the tunnel is maintenance, or rather the absence of it. Instead of a crew cutting the growth back to a square edge, the rolling stock does the trimming, brushing the same profile through the same trees year after year until the wood learns the shape.

The result is a corridor of a few kilometres where the walls meet overhead and the light turns green. It bends gently, which is why the photographs work: you cannot see the end, so the arch seems to run on forever. In summer the sides are solid leaf. In winter it is a bare grey lattice over rusting rail, and the effect the place is famous for is simply not there.

The name arrived later, with couples who walked the line and a local story that a wish made inside comes true if the two people are honest with one another. Klevan is older than all of it, keeping the ruins of a castle begun by the Czartoryski family, and Rivne sits a short drive southeast.

How to explore the Tunnel of Love in 3D

This is where MAPAS helps. Rather than the same three photographs everyone has seen, you get the real terrain in 3D, satellite imagery you can tilt and turn, and live Street View wherever the cameras have been.

Pinch to tilt and the forest stops being a flat green smear and becomes a canopy with height and gaps in it. From there the rail line reads as a seam stitched through the trees.

For a first run, try this order:

1. Search for Klevan, Rivne Oblast, Ukraine, and switch to 3D so the village and the woods behind it lift into relief.
2. Find the railway leaving the northern edge of the village and follow it northeast toward Orzhiv — the corridor shows as a narrow break in the canopy.
3. Tilt low and track the line slowly. Watch where the trees thin, where fields interrupt the wood, and where the arch is genuinely closed.
4. Drop into Street View at the level crossings and on Klevan's streets. Coverage along a private industrial line is patchy, so the crossings and the village are your reliable ground-level entries.
5. Follow the spur to its end at the plant sidings in Orzhiv, so you know which direction the trains come from.
6. Swing back and circle Klevan Castle at roof height to see how the village and the line sit together.

Beyond the tunnel

• Klevan Castle — a ruined seat begun in the fifteenth century above the village, reached in minutes from the line.
• Rivne — the regional capital, with rail links and the nearest full range of places to stay and eat.
• Ostroh — a castle on a bluff and an academy founded in the sixteenth century, south of Rivne.
• Dubno — a well-preserved fortress town on the Ikva river, further southwest.
• Lutsk — Lubart's Castle, the brick landmark of neighbouring Volyn oblast.

Why the seasons decide everything here

A photograph flattens the tunnel into an evergreen ideal. The 3D view is more truthful, because satellite imagery is captured on real dates. Compare the wood in leaf with the same ground in early spring and you see how much of the effect depends on a few months of growth: the corridor that looks enclosed in July is an open cutting in March.

Tilting also settles a question the photographs dodge — the arch is not continuous. Some stretches close completely, others open to sky where the trees are younger or a field runs up to the ballast. Knowing which is which is the difference between a long walk and a short one.

Before you go

Check your government's current travel advice for Ukraine before anything else, and read it properly rather than skimming it. Advisories, insurance cover, curfews and border procedures all change, and Ukrainian airspace remains closed to civil flights, so any journey is overland.

When travel is possible again, aim for late May through August for full leaf, or October for the gold. The tunnel sits on working industrial land beside a village where people live ordinary lives, and it deserves quiet feet.

Common questions

Is the Tunnel of Love a real railway?

Yes. It is a short freight spur serving a woodworking plant at Orzhiv, and trains still use it. The tunnel exists because of them, not despite them.

When is it actually green?

Roughly late spring to early autumn. Peak leaf falls in the early summer months; by November the branches are bare and stay that way until April.

Is MAPAS free to use?

Yes. It is free on the App Store, needs no sign-up before you start exploring, and works on iPhone and iPad.

A place made by accident, kept by habit, and now sitting behind a war. That is a lot for one small line of track in a quiet corner of Volhynia.

Open MAPAS, find the seam in the trees above Klevan, and follow it all the way to the end.