Lviv (Ukrainian: Lviv was founded by King Danylo Halytskiy of the Ruthenian principality of Halych-Volhynia, and named in honor of his son, Lev. When Danylo died Lev made Lviv the capital of Halich-Volhynia. The city is first mentioned in theHalych-Volhynian Chronicle,which dates from 1256. It was captured by Poland in 1349 and, in 1356, Casimir III of Poland brought in German burghers and granted the Magdeburg rights which implied that all city matters were to be resolved by a council, elected by the wealthy citizens. The city council seal of the 14th century stated: S(igillum): Civitatis Lembvrgensis. As part of Poland (and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), Lviv became the capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship.

As Lviv prospered, it became religiously and ethnically diverse. The 17th century brought invading armies of Swedes, Hungarians from Transylvania, Russians and Cossacks to its gates. However, Lviv was the only major city of Poland that was not captured by the invaders. In 1672 it was besieged by the Turks, who also failed to conquer it. Lviv was captured for the first time by a foreign army in 1704, when Swedish troops under King Charles XII entered the city after a siege.

In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the city known in German as Lemberg became the capital of the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. It was captured by the Russian army in September 1914 but retaken by Austria-Hungary in June the following year.

With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire at the end of World War I Lviv became an arena of conflict between the local Ukrainian and Polish populations. Between the World Wars, it was the third largest Polish city (after Warsaw and Łódź) and the seat of the Lwów Voivodeship. Lviv and its population suffered greatly from the two world wars and the Holocaust. After the war, the Soviet Union expelled most of the ethnic Polish population, which was resettled in the Recovered Territories, little remains of Polish culture in Lviv except for the Italian influenced architecture.

Lviv remains today one of the main centres of Ukrainian culture, and the origin of much of the nation's political class.

Government

Administrative division

Lviv is divided into six raions (districts), each with its own administrative bodies:

• Halytskyi (Галицький район)
• Zaliznychnyi (Залізничний район)
• Lychakivskyi (Личаківський район)
• Sykhivskyi (Сихівський район)
• Frankivskyi (Франківський район)
• Shevchenkivskyi (Шевченківський район)

Notable suburbs include:

• Vynnyky (місто Винники)
• Briukhovychi (селище Брюховичі)
• Rudne (селище Рудне)

Transport

Buses

The public bus network is not well-developed: it has few lines. A cheap alternative is the marshrutki, small private buses which go where the city buses do not. Marshrutki have no fixed stops or timetable but are cheaper and fast. The marshrutki also run on suburban lines to most nearby towns, e.g. to Shehyni at the Polish border.

Tramways

The first tramway lines were opened on 5 May 1880 and the last horse-powered line was electrified on 31 May 1894. In 1922 the tramways were switched to driving on the right-hand side. After World War II and the annexation of the city by the Soviet Union, several lines were closed but most of infrastructure was preserved. The trackage is narrow-gauge, unusual for the Soviet Union, but explained by the fact that the system was built while the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and needs to run on narrow medieval streets in the centre of town.

The Lviv tramway now runs about 220 cars on 75 km of track, most of which is in very poor condition. The trams are in fair condition but can be very full during rush hours.

Trolleybuses

After the war and expulsion of most of the population, the city grew rapidly, due to evacuees returning from Russia and the Soviet Government's vigorous development of heavy industry. This included transfer of entire factories from the Urals and other distant places to the newly "liberated" (acquired) territories of the USSR, including Lviv.

The city centre tramway lines were replaced with trolleybuses on 27 November 1952. Later, new lines were opened to the blocks of flats at the city outskirts. The network now runs 200 trolleybuses, mostly of the 1960s 14Tr type.

Railways

Modern Lviv remains a hub on which nine railways converge, providing local and international services. Several trains cross the nearby Polish-Ukrainian border (mostly via Przemyśl). There are good connections to Slovakia (Košice) and Hungary (Budapest). By western standards, the trains are slow. Many routes have overnight trains with sleeping compartments.

Airport

Lviv International Airport (LWO) is 6 km from the city centre.

Culture

Lviv's historic centre has been on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage list since 1998. UNESCO gave the following reasons for its selection:

Architecture

Lviv's historic churches, synagogues, buildings and relics date from the 13th century. In recent centuries, it was spared some of the invasions and wars that destroyed other Ukrainian cities. Its architecture reflects various European styles and periods. After the fires of 1527 and 1556 Lviv lost most of its gothic-style buildings, but it retains many buildings in renaissance, baroque, and classic styles. There are works by artists of the Vienna Secession, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco styles.

The buildings have many stone sculptures and carvings, particularly on large doors, hundreds of years old. The remains of old churches dot the central cityscape. Some three- to five-storey buildings have hidden inner courtyards and grottoes in various states of repair. Some cemeteries are of interest, for example the Lychakivskiy Cemetery. Leaving the central area, the architectural style changes radically as Soviet-era high-rise blocks dominate. In the centre, the Soviet era is reflected mainly in a few modern-style national monuments and sculptures.

Monuments in Lviv

• Nikifor
• The Good Soldier Švejk
• Adam Mickiewicz
• Ivan Pidkova
• Taras Shevchenko
• Ivan Trush
• Pope John Paul II
• Jan Kilinski
• Ivan Franko
• King Danylo
• Saint George
• Mykhailo Hrushevskyi
• Bartosz Głowacki
• Monument to the Virgin Mary
• Ivan Fedorov

Every day the book market takes places around the monument to Ivan Fedorov. He was a Russian typographer in the 16th century who fled Moscow and found a new home in Lviv. New ideas came to Lviv during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the 19th century, many publishing houses, newspapers and magazines were established. Diverse literature written in Lviv contributed to Austrian, Ukrainian, Yiddish and Polish literature. Translation work took place between these diverse cultures, creating a truly unique European culture that transcended borders. The annual Lviv Book Fair continues this tradition.

Religion

From its establishment Lemberg was a city of religious variety and conflicts between different faiths. At one point over 60 churches existed in the city. The largest Christian churches have existed in the city since the 13th century. The three major Christian groups (the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Lviv, the German-speaking and Polish Catholics, and the Armenian Church) have each had a diocesan seat in Lviv since the 16th century. In the 1700s the Orthodox community took their allegiance to the Pope in Rome and became the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. This bond was forcibly dissolved in 1946 by the Soviet authorities, while the Roman Catholic community was forced out by the expulsion of the Polish population. Since 1989 religious life in Lviv has experienced a revival.

Lviv is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lviv, the centre of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine and (until 21 August 2005) was the centre of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. About 35 per cent of religious buildings belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, 11.5 per cent to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 9 per cent to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate and 6 per cent to the Roman Catholic Church.

Until 2005 Lviv was the only city with two Cardinals: Lubomyr Husar (UGCC) and Marian Jaworski (RCC).

In June 2001 Pope John Paul II visited the Latin Cathedral, St. George's Cathedral, and the Armenian Cathedral.

Lviv historically had a large and active Jewish community, as witnessed today by its synagogues. Until 1941 at least 45 synagogues and prayer houses existed. Even in the 16th century, two separate communities existed. One lived in today's old town, the other one in the Krakowskie Przedmieście. In the 19th century a more differentiated community started to spread out. Liberal Jews sought more cultural assimilation and spoke German and Polish. On the other hand, Orthodox and Hasidic Jews tried to retain the old traditions. Between 1941 and 1944 the Nazis in effect completely destroyed the centuries-old Jewish tradition of Lviv. Most synagogues were destroyed, the Jewish population forced into a ghetto, from which they were later transported into concentration camps where they were murdered.

Under the Soviet Union synagogues remained closed and were used as storage facilities or movie houses. Only since the fall of the Iron Curtain has the remainder of the Jewish community experienced a faint revival.

Arts

The "Group Artes" was a young movement founded in 1929. Many of the artists studied in Paris and had travelled throughout in Europe. They worked and experimented in different areas of modern art: Futurism, Cubism, New Objectivity and Surrealism. A lot of cooperation took place between avant-garde musicians and authors. Altogether thirteen exhibitions by Artes took place in Warsaw, Kraków, Łódz and Lviv. The Nazi occupation put an end to this group. Otto Hahn was executed in 1942 in Lviv, Aleksander Riemer murdered in 1943 in Auschwitz. Henryk Streng and Margit Reich-Sielska were able to escape the Shoah. Most of the surviving members of Artes lived in Poland after 1945. Only Margit Reich-Sielska (1900–1980) and Roman Sielksi (1903–1990) stayed in Soviet Lviv.

Theatre and opera

Lviv is historically strong on culture. In 1842 the Skarbek-Theatre was opened, making it the third largest theatre in Central Europe. In 1903 the sumptuous opera house (at that time called the City-Theatre) was opened, emulating the Vienna State Opera house. The house initially offered a changing repertoire such as classical dramas in German and Polish language, opera, operetta, comedy, and theatre. The opera house is named after the diva Salomea Krushelnytska, who worked here.

Museums and art galleries

The most notable of the museums and art galleries are the National Gallery, the Museum of Religion (formerly the Museum of Atheism) and the National Museum (formerly the Museum of Industry).

Music

Music and radio have a strong tradition and deep roots in Lviv. The classical pianist Mieczysław Horszowski (1892–1993) was born here. The opera diva Salomea Kruszelnicka in the 1920s to 1930s called Lviv her home. "Polskie Radio Lwów" was a Polish radio station that went on-air on 15 January 1930. The programme proved very popular in Poland. Classical music and entertainment was aired, as well as lectures, readings, youth-programmes, news and liturgical services on Sunday.

Popular throughout Poland was the "Comic Lviv Wave", a cabaret-revue with musical pieces. Jewish artists contributed a great part to this artistic activity. Composers such as Henryk Wars and songwriter Emanuel Szlechter, the actor Mieczysław Monderer and Adolf Fleischer ("Aprikosenkranz und Untenbaum") were working in Lviv. The most famous stars of the shows were Henrik Vogelfänger and Kazimierz Wajda, who together appeared as the comic duo "Szczepko and Tonko", who were similar to Laurel and Hardy.

After World War II, many of the Jewish artists and entertainers were either killed or fled; the Polish artists had to leave for the new Poland that had the Oder-Neisse Line and the Curzon Line as its frontiers as a result of the Yalta Conference.

Lviv is the hometown of the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 winner Ruslana, who has since become well known in Europe.

Universities and academia

Lviv University is one of the oldest in Central Europe. Its founding goes back as a Jesuit school in 1608. Its prestige greatly increased through the work of philosopher Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938), one of the founders of the Lwów-Warsaw School of Logic. This school of thought set benchmarks for academic research and education in Poland. Very well-known were the mathematicians Stefan Banach, Juliusz Schauder and Stanislaw Ulam, who turned Lviv in the 1930s into the "World Centre of Functional Analysis". Although the scientists faced many obstacles at the universities, their share in Lviv academia was very substantial.

Mathematics

Lviv is the home of the Scottish Café, where, in the 1930s and the early 1940s, Polish mathematicians from the Lwów School of Mathematics met and spent their afternoons discussing mathematical problems. Stanisław Ulam (later, a participant in the Manhattan Project and the proposer of the Teller-Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons), Stefan Banach (one of the founders of functional analysis), Hugo Steinhaus, Karol Borsuk, Kazimierz Kuratowski, Mark Kac, and many other famous mathematicians would gather there. The café, originally on Akamemichna, is now called the Desertniy Bar, and is located at 27, Taras Shevchenko Prospekt.

Prints and media

Starting in the 1900s a new movement started under with young authors from Eastern Europe. Young Jewish authors in particular were searching for a new identity through modern, Yiddish literature. In Lviv, a small neo-romantic group of authors formed around the lyricist Schmuel Jankev Imber. Small print offices produced collections of modern poems and short stories. Through emigration a large network was established.

A second, smaller group tried in the 1930s to create a connection between avantgarde art and Yiddish culture. Members of this group were Debora Vogel, Rachel Auerbach and Rachel Korn. The Shoah destroyed this movement violently. Debora Vogel was, amongst many other Yiddish authors, murdered by the Nazis in the 1940s.

Films and books featuring Lviv

• Portions of Schindler's List were shot in the city centre, as this was less expensive than in Kraków.
• Some of the Austrian road-movie Blue Moon was shot in Lviv.
• Parts of the movie and novel Everything Is Illuminated take place in Lviv.
• Brian R. Banks' Muse & Messiah: The Life, Imagination & Legacy of Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) has several pages which discuss the history and cultural-social life of the Lviv region. The book includes a CD-ROM with many old and new photographs and the first English map of nearby Drohobych.

Sports

Lviv was an important centre for sport in Central Europe and it is regarded as the cradle of Polish football. The first known official goal in a football match in Poland was scored there on 14 July 1894 during the Lviv-Kraków game. The goal was scored by Włodzimierz Chomicki, who represented the team of Lviv. In 1904 Kazimierz Hemerling from Lviv published the first translation into Polish of the rules of football; another native of Lviv, Stanisław Polakiewicz, became the first officially recognised Polish referee in 1911, the year in which the first Polish Football Federation was founded in Lviv.

The first Polish professional football club, Czarni Lwów, opened in 1903 and the first stadium, which belonged to Pogon, in 1913. Another Lviv side, Pogon Lwów, was four times football champion of Poland (1922, 1923, 1925 and 1926). In the late 1920s, as many as four teams from Lviv played in the Polish Football League (Pogon, Czarni, Hasmonea and Lechia). Several notable figures of Polish football come from this city, including Kazimierz Gorski, Ryszard Koncewicz, Michal Matyas and Waclaw Kuchar.

Lviv is also the Polish cradle of other sports. In January 1905 the first Polish ice-hockey match took place there; two years later the first ski-jumping competition was organized in nearby Slawsko, and in the same year the first Polish basketball games were organized in Lviv's gymnasiums. Several years earlier, in the autumn of 1887, in a gymnasium by Lyczakowska Street, the first Polish track and field competition took place, with such sports as long jump and high jump. Lviv's athlete Wladysław Ponurski represented Austria in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. In addition, on 9 July 1922 the first official rugby game in Poland took place at the stadium of Pogon Lwów, in which the rugby team of Orzel Biały Lwów divided itself into two teams - "The Reds" and "The Blacks". The referee of this game was a Frenchman by the name of Robineau.

Lviv now has several major professional football clubs and some smaller clubs. FC Karpaty Lviv, founded in 1963, plays in the first division of the Ukrainian Premier League. Sometimes, the youth of Lviv assemble on the central street (Freedom Avenue) to watch and cheer an outdoor broadcast of a game.

Lviv's Ukraina Stadium is to be renovated and will host three group matches during EURO 2012.

Sister cities

Economy

Lviv is one of the largest cities in Ukraine and is growing rapidly. It typifies a post-Soviet era developing city. It has problems with infrastructure and pollution, including heavy downtown car pollution on weekdays, some local corruption and irregularities in water supply (especially hot water). According to the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, the average salary in the Lviv Oblast is a little less than the average for Ukraine, which, in September 2006, was about 1000 UAH or roughly 200 USD. In 2006, Ukraine's economic freedom was rated at 3.24, where a rating 1.0 is "freer" than a rating 5.0. According to the World Bank classification, Lviv is a lower middle-income city.

There are many street vendors of food, books, clothes, traditional cultural items and tourist gifts. There are many restaurants and shops, some of which sell expensive western-made goods.

In an interesting mixture of the past and present, peasants from the countryside sell their goods beside a cellphone shop in a medieval building.

Banking and money trading are an important part of the economy, with many banks and exchange offices throughout the city.

Education

Lviv is an important education centre of Ukraine. It is home to three major universities and a number of smaller schools of higher education. There are eight institutes of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, more than forty research institutes, three academies and eleven state-owned colleges. Another institute that was and is renowned in the region is the Lviv Polytechnic (in Polish: Politechnika Lwowska).

Universities

• Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical Academy - (Львiвський Національний Медичний Унiверситет iм. Данила Галицького)
• Lviv University – (Львівський національний університет імені Івана Франка)
• Lviv Polytechnic – (Національний університет "Львівська політехніка")
• Ukrainian Catholic University – (Український Католицький Університет )

Tourist attractions

• the Old Town
  • Ploshcha Rynok Market Square; 18,300 square metres.
    • Black House
  • Armenian Cathedral
  • Orthodox Cathedral with Korniakt Bell Tower
  • Latin Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
  • St. George's Cathedral of the Greek-Catholic Church
  • Dominican Church of Corpus Christi
  • Chapel of Boim family
• Lviv High Castle hill overlooking the historical center
  • Union of Lublin Mound
• Lychakivskiy Cemetery

References

See also

• List of famous Leopolitans
• Polish football clubs in Lviv: Pogoń Lwów, Czarni Lwów, Lechia Lwów

External links

sisterlinks Lviv

• city-adm.lviv.ua — Official city website
• lviv.ua — Directory of Lviv-related websites
• Lviv Map — Download and print
• Lviv Rail Terminal — Official Website
• FC Karpaty Lviv — Official website
• Lviv - photographs and information in Czech
• Lviv Photo-Blog — Photos and galleries about ancient and modern Lviv city