Sights in Lviv
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Church of St Pyatnytsa
The small Church of St Pyatnytsa has a renowned 17th-century wooden iconostasis.
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Arsenal Museum
The town’s arsenal (1554–56) is now the Arsenal Museum, where you can check out suits of armour and various cannons and weapons.
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B’nai B’rith Leopolis Jewish Cultural Centre
Around the corner from the Jewish hospital is the B’nai B’rith Leopolis Jewish Cultural Centre, which can arrange tours of Jewish Lviv.
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Janowska Concentration Camp
A 15-minute walk west of the Yanivske cemetery are a plaque and a billboard marking the spot of the Janowska concentration camp, now a prison.
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Museum of Religious History
Attached to the Dominican Cathedral and Monastery and to the left of the entrance is the Museum of Religious History, which was an atheist museum in Soviet times.
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Museum of Ethnography, Arts and Crafts
The Museum of Ethnography, Arts and Crafts has exhibits of furniture, clothing, woodcarvings, ceramics and farming implements that give a basic introduction to Carpathian life.
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Lvivske Museum of Beer and Brewing
The oldest still-functioning brewery in Europe turns 300 in 2015, and a tasting tour through the mainly underground facilities is well worth the price of admission. One old storage vault has been turned into a unique beer hall.
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Beis Aharon V’Yisrael Synagogue
Artefacts of Lviv’s Jewish heritage are scattered around various museums in the old town. Lviv’s only functioning synagogue is the attractive Beis Aharon V’Yisrael Synagogue, built in 1924.
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Transfiguration Church
The tall copper-domed church just west of the Armenian Cathedral is the late-17th-century Transfiguration Church, the first church in the city to revert to Greek Catholicism after Ukrainian independence in 1991.
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Museum of Folk Architecture and Life
The open-air Museum of Folk Architecture and Life displays different regional styles of farmsteads, windmills, churches and schools. It doesn’t hold a candle to Kyiv’s Pyrohovo Museum, but it’s worth checking out if you’re not heading to Kyiv.
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Jewish Hospital
In the outer district, you’ll find the Jewish Hospital one of Lviv’s architectural highlights. From afar this Moorish, dome-topped building looks like a mosque, but up close Jewish motifs are evident in the striking, eclectic façade.
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Golden Rose Synagogue
The late-16th-century Golden Rose Synagogue stood at the heart of the inner district before the Nazis blew it up in 1941. Archaeologists were hard at work excavating the fenced-off site when we visited. The local Jewish community hopes to rebuild the synagogue in the near future.
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Apteka Museum
The Apteka Museum is located inside a still-functioning pharmacy dating from 1735. Entrance into the eerie pidval (basement) is by request only. You can buy a bottle of iron-rich medicinal wine, if you can bear the temporary tooth discolouration. Ask for ‘ vino ’.
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National Museum
Most of the National Museum is dedicated to Ukrainian art of the 12th to 20th centuries. The old religious icons and medieval books are quite extraordinary if you’re a fan. The temporary exhibitions by local artists are of a more variable quality. Taras Shevchenko’s moustachioed death mask is also here.
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Birthplace of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
Opposite the Pototsky Palace is the birthplace of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the world’s original ‘masochist’. The author of Venus in Furs came into the world here in 1835, although he spent most of his subsequent 60 years begging to be whipped in Austria, Germany and Italy.
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Holocaust memorial
About 500m north of the Theatre of Opera and Ballet on pr Chornovola is the Holocaust memorial, a vaguely cubist statue of a tormented figure looking skyward. The Lviv ghetto began here after most of the city's Jews were killed or deported to Belzec in the 'Great Action' of August 1942. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was the most famous resident of the ghetto, which was liquidated in June 1943.
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Bernardine Church and Monastery
Lviv's most stunning baroque interior belongs to the 17th-century Bernardine Church and Monastery now the Greek Catholic Church of St Andrew. The highlight is the long ceiling covered in recently restored frescoes. Sunday masses spill out into the street, filling the surrounding square with song. Walking from here back to pr Svobody, you'll pass pl Halytska and the statue of Prince Danylo Halytsky, Lviv's founder.
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High Castle
Visiting the High Castle (Vysoky Zamok) on Castle Hill (Zamkova Hora) is a quintessential Lviv experience. The 14th-century ruined stone fort at the summit was Lviv's birthplace and offers the best vantage point of the modern city. Good times to visit are at sunset and in winter, when there are no leaves obstructing the view. Newlyweds like to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne here, while enterprising locals rent binoculars and sell souvenirs.
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Roman Catholic Cathedral
Opposite the Boyim Chapel, on pl Katedralna stands the working Roman Catholic Cathedral (1370-1480). Here you can see a cannonball hanging by a chain off the cathedral's corner, which miraculously failed to penetrate its walls during a historic battle. If you walk around the cathedral, you'll see a relief of Pope John Paul II on the other side, erected to commemorate his visit to Lviv in 2001.
The church's exterior is Gothic while the heavily gilded interior, one of the city's most ornate, has a more baroque feel.
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Pototsky Palace
The Lviv Art Gallery has two wings – one in the lavish Pototsky Palace, the other around the corner on vul Stefanyka. The former houses an impressive collection of European art from the 14th to 18th centuries, including works by Rubens, Bruegel, Goya and Caravaggio. The art is all on the second floor. A tour of the palace’s empty but striking ground floor costs an extra 5uah. The wing on vul Stefanyka contains 19th- and early 20th-century art, most of it Polish and Russian.
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Dormition Church
The Ukrainian Orthodox Dormition Church is easily distinguished by the 65m, triple-tiered Kornyakt bell tower rising beside it. The tower was named after its Greek benefactor, a merchant who was also the original owner of Kornyakt House on pl Rynok. It’s well worth going inside to see the beautiful interior of the church, accessible through the gate to the right of the tower. It’s only open during daily services, at 8am and 6pm. Attached to the church is the diminutive Three Saints Chapel.
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Lviv Art Gallery
Its buildings are Lviv's strong point, rather than its museums, but it's worth popping your head into one or two of them. The best is the Lviv Art Gallery, which has two wings - one in the lavish Pototsky Palace, the other around the corner on vul Stefanyka. The former houses an impressive collection of European art from the 14th to 18th centuries, including works by Rubens, Bruegel, Goya and Caravaggio. The art is all on the second floor. A tour of the palace's empty but striking ground floor costs an extra 5uah. The wing on vul Stefanyka contains 19th and early 20th-century art, most of it Polish and Russian.
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Boyim Chapel
A highlight of Ploshcha Rynok is the Boyim Chapel just off the square’s southwest corner on pl Katedralna (Cathedral Sq). The blackened façade of the burial chapel (1617) of Hungarian merchant Georgi Boyim and his family is covered in magnificent if somewhat morbid carvings. Atop the cupola is an unusual sculpture of Christ sitting with his head in one hand, pondering his sorrows. The interior is dizzying, featuring biblical reliefs with cameo appearances by members of the Boyim family. There are more images of the family patriarchs on the exterior above the door and on the wall flanking vul Halytska.
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St George’s Cathedral
On a hilltop beyond Ivan Franko Park stands St George’s Cathedral. This is the historic and sacred centre of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, which was handed back after 44 years of compulsory Orthodox control. Constructed in 1774–90, this yellow building is pleasant enough, especially since a refurbishment for the pope’s 2001 visit. However, it’s perhaps not as striking as some of Lviv’s less important churches. For many, the most memorable element will be the 3D icon of Christ near the far right corner, if looking from the door. It presents Christ’s face from one angle, and the image from the shroud of Turin from another.
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Lviv History Museum
The Lviv History Museum is split into three collections dotted around pl Rynok. The best part of this museum is at No 6. Here you can enjoy the Italian-Renaissance inner courtyard and slide around the exquisitely decorated interior in cloth slippers on the woodcut parquetry floor made from 14 kinds of hardwood. It was also here on 22 December 1686 that Poland and Russia signed the treaty that partitioned Ukraine. No 4 covers 19th- and 20th-century history, including two floors dedicated to the Ukrainian nationalist movement. No 24 expounds on the city’s earlier history. The highlight is an enormous painting depicting the old walled city of Lviv in the 18th century. Pr…
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