Attractions of Lviv

The Museum of Folk Architecture and Life named after Klymentiy Sheptytskyi in Lviv is also known as "Shevchenko Grove", Lviv Skansen or open-air museum. It is located on the wooded hills of the "Znesinnia" Regional Landscape Park in the eastern part of Lviv, behind the Vysoky Zamok.

The open-air museum in Lviv was founded in 1971, although the exhibition began to take shape in the interwar period at the initiative of Lviv art critic Mykhaylo Drahan and Archimandrite Klymentiy Sheptytskyi. The first exhibit was the wooden church of Saint Nicholas of 1761, which was transported from the village of Kryvka.

Currently, the exposition of the open-air museum includes more than 110 architectural monuments from all western regions of Ukraine: 6 churches, residential buildings, a forge, a school, a sawmill, a cloth mill, a water mill and a windmill. The museum has the largest collection of sacred buildings in Europe.

The exposition is divided into six ethnographic zones, representing the daily life of residents of various Western Ukrainian regions: Boikivshchyna, Lemkivshchyna, Hutsulshchyna, Bukovyna, Pokuttya, Podillya, Zakarpattia, Lviv region. Each zone is a mini village with religious, residential and economic buildings. The interiors of most houses are available for viewing, and household items are exhibited in them.

In particular, the central exhibit of the "Hutsulshchyna" zone is a traditional Hutsul grazhda from the village of Kryvorivnia. And the oldest exhibit is a peasant hut from 1749.

Traditional Christmas and Easter celebrations take place in the Museum every year, attracting the attention of a large number of Lviv residents and guests of the city. At individual facilities, you can get acquainted with ancient crafts, including straw weaving, pysankarstvo, and playing folk instruments. Workshops for children and adults are constantly held in the open-air museum.

The Franciscan church was built in Lviv in 1708-1178. as the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Capuchin Monastery, founded in 1707 by Elzhbeta Sofiya Senyavska. The temple is made in baroque style.

After the liquidation of the Capuchin order in 1785, the monastery complex was occupied by the Franciscans.

In Soviet times, a boarding school was located here.

Today, the church belongs to the Church of Seventh-day Adventist Christians.

The Lviv Ivan Franko National Literary and Memorial Museum (Franko House) was opened in 1940 on the initiative of the writer's youngest son, Petro.

The museum is located in a small two-story villa in the Swiss style, where Ivan Franko and his family spent the last 14 years of his life.

The exhibition was based on a collection of autographs, letters, documents, photographs, books and personal belongings from the writer's office, collected by the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society.

In Franko House, the atmosphere of the life of the writer and his family is recreated in detail: a study, a library, a dining room, Ivan Franko's bedroom, a women's room, Olha Franko's room, Taras and Petro Franko's room. In 2018, the exhibition "Kitchen of the Franko House" was created.

The literary exposition is located in the neighboring two-story house of the Polish entrepreneur Antony Uvyera, built in 1923-1925 in the neoclassical style according to the project of the Lviv architect Ivan Bahenskyi.

Upon request, the museum "Franko House" staff conducts theatrical, thematic, author's, interactive excursions, walking tours through the streets of Lviv, themed quests, and master classes. Literary evenings, theater performances, concerts of classical and modern music, various exhibitions and performances are also periodically held in the museum.

The legendary George Hotel in Lviv is the oldest hotel in Ukraine, an elegant architectural monument of the times of Austria-Hungary.

Founded in 1793 as the restaurant "Under the Three Hooks", on the basis of which the De La Rus Inn opened three years later. In 1816, the hotel became the property of the Bavarian merchant Georg (George) Hoffmann, who arranged the garden, built a theater hall and an entrance gate.

The current building in the Viennese Neo-Renaissance style was built in 1901 according to the project of the famous Viennese architects Hermann Helmer and Ferdinand Fellner, the authors of the Odessa Opera. The "Saint George" relief was moved from the old building to the pediment of the new one. In the niches of the side facades are allegorical statues symbolizing Europe, Asia, America, Africa. The hall with a wide spread staircase impresses with grandeur.

Many celebrities stayed at the Georges Hotel: Honore de Balzac, Ferenc Liszt, Ethel.-Lilian Voynich and others.

The Museum of Glass in Lviv was established on the initiative of a famous Ukrainian glazier, chairman of the organizing committee of the International Symposiums of Tempered Glass in Lviv, former rector of the Lviv National Academy of Arts, Professor Andriy Bokotey.

Among the oldest exhibits are glassware and beads made in the I-II centuries AD in the Roman colonies in southern Ukraine, beads and utensils from the XI-XII centuries, as well as bracelets and fragments of bracelets found during archaeological excavations.

Since 2006, the museum has been operating in the basement of the Bandinelli Palace in the Rynok Square. Since then, the museum's collection has been systematically replenished with works created as part of the International Symposium of Tempered Glass. Part of it was transferred to the funds of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv.

The Gunpowder Tower is a fully preserved fragment of Lviv's defensive structures. One of the 17 towers that were part of the ring of city fortifications. A monument of military defense architecture of the Renaissance era.

The Gunpowder tower was located on the defensive rampart behind the second line of fortifications and served to protect the approaches to the city from the eastern side. It was also used to store gunpowder and ammunition, and in peacetime - as a grain warehouse.

It is built of unhewn stone, semicircular in plan, three-story, covered with a gabled roof. The thickness of the walls reaches 2.5 meters. For more than four centuries, the rising ground level hid the lower part of the tower by one and a half to two meters.

Since 1959, the premises have been occupied by the Architect's House with an exhibition hall. Now the Center for Architecture, Design and Urbanism "Gunpowder Tower" is located here.

The historical museum complex of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv is located in the former villa of Lviv University professor Emil Dunikovsky, which was built in 1896-1898 by architect Vladislav Raush in the Neo-Baroque style.

In 1911 it was purchased for the needs of the Church Museum by its founder and patron, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. It was here in 1913 that the first exposition of the National Museum in Lviv was opened.

Now in the Historical museum complex the permanent exposition "Ukrainian art of the XX-th century" is developed. It is a continuation of the exposition of Ukrainian art of the XII-XIX centuries, which is located in the main building of the museum on Svobody Avenue.

The presented works present the formation and development of Ukrainian art culture in line with the main styles and directions of world art of the last century, and reflects the cultural and artistic processes of the Soviet period, which developed outside the normative aesthetics of socialist realism.

The fire and technical exhibition of the Ministry of Emergencies was opened in the building of the Fire Safety Department in Lviv region.

The first hall reflects the history of fire development in Galicia and, in particular, in Lviv. Among the exhibits is an Austrian-made pump from 1849.

The second hall is dedicated to the everyday life of firefighters.

The exposition concludes with a hall dedicated to the Chornobyl disaster.

The Museum of the History of Lviv Polytechnic was founded in 2002 on the initiative of the then rector Yuriy Rudavsky.

The museum premises are located on the third floor of a monumental three-story building - an educational building, built according to the design of Yulian Zakhariyevych in 1873-1877 in the Italian Neo-Renaissance style specifically for the Imperial and Royal Technical Academy. Now it is the main building of the National University "Lviv Polytechnic", which is an architectural monument.

The museum premises have a rich architectural decor - pilasters, stucco molding, light lanterns in the ceiling, wall and ceiling paintings. The window overlooking the central staircase opens a view of the richly decorated space of the stairs and original paintings of the 1890s, made according to the sketches of Yulian Zakhariyevych.

The museum's exposition contains documents, photographs, devices and other exhibits that tell about the foundation and development of Lviv Polytechnic, the oldest technical university in Ukraine and one of the oldest in Europe. The history of the formation of Lviv Polytechnic is presented in chronological order, as well as information about world-famous scientists whose fate is connected with Lviv Polytechnic. Historical photographs of buildings, students' studies and everyday life are also presented for viewing. Special attention during the excursions will be paid to the involvement of Lviv Polytechnic in oil production or electrification of Galicia, the development of aviation, astronautics and computer science.

The Museum of the History of the Kruty Heroes Lviv State Lyceum covers the history of the creation and development of the educational institution, as well as some pages of the history of the formation of Ukrainian statehood.

The first chapter of the exhibition is dedicated to the Battle of Kruty in January 1918 and the memory of the Heroes of Kruty. The stands show the ratio of forces, the composition of units, the course of the battle. All this is illustrated by diagrams, maps, tables. The stand is complemented by elements of armaments of that time: the German Mauser 98 self-loading rifle of the 1898 model, the Russian Mosin rifle of the 1891 model, and the Maxim machine gun.

A separate exposition section is devoted to the prehistory of the lyceum - Lviv Republican Special Boarding School with enhanced military and physical training, which operated from 1985 to 1992, and on the basis of which the lyceum was formed. The section of the history of the lyceum and its development in the conditions of formation of the Ukrainian statehood consists of 4 blocks: creation and development of the Lviv military lyceum (1992-1996); development of Lviv State Lyceum with enhanced military and physical training (1996-2010); lyceum in the period up to 2018; lyceum at the present stage.

Two stands in the museum are dedicated to weapons of different periods. The exhibition presents 18 samples of weapons since the eighteenth century. Some of the materials are presented in multimedia form on an interactive panel, which was presented at the opening of the updated exhibition in 2022.

The exhibition of rare models of transport "Retro Garage" has been on display since 2018 in the premises of the Museum of the History of Science and Technology, which is a department of the Lviv Historical Museum.

The exhibition of retro cars is set up in the oldest hangar from the complex of the first tram depot in Lviv, built in 1894 by the Lviv architect Alfred Kamenobrodsky. The rectangular brick structure has a gable roof supported on wooden trusses supported by side walls and wooden posts.

On an area of more than 500 square meters, Andriy Hladun's private collection of bicycles, mopeds, and motorcycles from the first half of the 20th century and a number of examples of the American automobile industry of the 1970s and 1980s from the collection of collector Taras Mayba are presented.

The Chevrolet Caprice Classic 1986 police car attracts the most attention of visitors. In addition, the museum presents the first city taxi of pre-war Lviv Citroen AC4 Berline Lux and a real fiakr (horse taxi). You can familiarize yourself with the samples of the products of the Lviv Motorcycle Plant from the years 1950–1970 from the funds of the Lviv Historical Museum.

Private collections of car models and American license plates are also exhibited at the exhibition.

The Museum of the History of Ukraine of the Lviv Historical Museum is housed in a four-story building on Rynok Square in Lviv, known as the "Massarivska Kamyanytsia" (Massari House). Built in the XV century in the Gothic style, later rebuilt in the style of the Renaissance.

For some time the house belonged to the family of the Venetian consul Antonio Massari. In the middle of the XIX century there was a delicacy shop Henneman. At the beginning of the XX century the facade was decorated with a triangular pediment, decorated with an allegorical relief by the sculptor Kurchynsky. Late Gothic vaults and windows on the first floor, elements of Renaissance interior decoration have been preserved.

Now in "Massarivska kamyanitsa" there is a historical exposition, which presents more than 2100 monuments of Ukrainian history from ancient times to the early twentieth century: Neolithic instruments and musical instruments, Trypillia ceramics, golden Scythian treasure, ancient Rus crosses, encolpions, medieval Lviv executioner swords, magnate women's and men's clothing, Cossack weapons, astronomical table clock of the XVIII century, collections of old prints and paintings. The portrait of young Roksolana, a girl Nastya Lisovska from Rohatyn, a Turkish prisoner who became the wife of Sultan Suleiman II, is still a secret.

The Peter and Paul Church in Lviv was built in 1668 as a Catholic church of Saints Peter and Paul.

In 1750, the temple was handed over to the monastic order of the Paulines, who rebuilt the building in the Baroque style and placed their monastery in it. In 1784-1786, the Austrian authorities handed over the shrine to the Greek Catholics. In 1798, the architect Klemens Ksaveriy Fesenher built a vestibule with a tower in the style of classicism.

Since 1989, the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul belonged to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Since December 15, 2018, it has been under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The Garrison Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (the former Church of Peter and Paul of the Jesuit Order) is one of the largest religious buildings in the city, the first vivid example of mannerism (early baroque) in Lviv.

Construction of the temple began in 1610 by the Jesuit monk Sebastyan Lyankhius, who was the author of the original project. The Italian architect Dzhakomo Briano, взявши maintained the pure style of the Italian Baroque during the completion of the church in 1618-1621, taking as a model the facade of the Il Gesu church in Rome. In 1630, the construction was completed, the Peter and Paul temple was consecrated, but the finishing works continued for another 30 years.

Trinefny temple. The main facade dominates, decorated with pilasters, niches with statues and a strong cornice. Inside - lush baroque decoration. Paintings were made by artists Francysk and Sebastyan Ekshteyn from Brno. In one of the side altars there is a highly artistic wooden crucifix by Yan Pfister.

Next to the church is a three-story building of the former Jesuit college.

In 2011, the church was consecrated as the Garrison Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

In the underground crypts of the Peter and Paul Church, there is a museum called "Dungeon of the Garrison Holy Apostles Peter and Paul Church", where you can order a tour of the church.

The main building of the Lviv State University of Life Safety was built in 1855-1863 by order of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph as a House for the Invalids to care for veterans of the Austrian army.

The three- to four-story building in the neo-Romanesque style with towers and a courtyard was designed by the architect Teofil Edvard Hansen.

In 1939-1941, the NKVD regiment was stationed here. During the Second World War, the building was not damaged, and a military unit was located in it again.

Since 1954, the former House for the Invalids has been home to a fire-technical school - now the University of Life Safety.