Attractions of Lviv region

A monument to the Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Ivasyuk was opened in Lviv in 2011 at the initiative and at the expense of the musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk.

Volodymyr Ivasyuk, the author of the most famous Ukrainian pop song "Chervona Ruta", is considered one of the founders of Ukrainian pop music. His mysterious death in 1979, according to the latest information, was organized by the KGB on the instructions of the top leadership of the USSR.

The 3.5-meter-high bronze sculpture was made by sculptor Serhiy Oleshko. Ivasyuk is depicted walking along a Lviv street.

The museum of the Ukrainian modernist artist Volodymyr Patyk opened in Lviv in 2024. It is located in the premises of the Potulitsky villa, built in 1891-1894 according to the design of Ivan Levinsky's bureau in the late neo-baroque style.

The Volodymyr Patyk Museum is a branch of the Lviv Regional History and Local History Museum.

The museum has a hall, a terrace, two interactive rooms, an exhibition hall and a corridor with changing exhibitions. In one of the rooms, the workshop-studio of Volodymyr Patyk is recreated.

The wife of the artist Roman Vasylyna donated to the museum about 100 of his paintings and graphic works, sketches, archives, as well as the artist's personal belongings. This collection became the basis of the museum exhibition.

Castles (Knyazha) Hill in the central part of Lviv (413 meters), on top of which the fortified residence of Prince Danylo Halytskyi was built in the 13th century. It is called the High Castle (Vysoky Zamok) as opposed to the Lower Castle (Citadel).

Initially, the fortress was wooden, with earthen ramparts. In 1362, it was rebuilt in stone by the Polish king Kasymyr, who captured Galicia. The castle, rectangular in plan, had four towers at the corners, the highest of which was a watchtower. Inside was the princely palace, barracks, ammunition depots and a deep well. In 1648, the castle was taken by the troops of Maksym Kryvonos.

In the 19th century, it was almost completely dismantled, the "High Castle" (Vysoky Zamok) park was built in its place, and an observation deck was built, which offers the best views of the city. A fragment of the southern stone wall with loopholes that protected the entrance to the castle territory has been preserved. A long staircase leads to the top.

Currently, there is a regional television center and a relay tower on the mountain.

The Way of the Cross in Lviv is an architectural complex that reproduces the main moments of the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

It is located on the northern slope of the High Castle (Vysoky Zamok) Hill. It consists of 15 stations (parking lots) with sculptures made by architect Bohdan Hretchak in 2010-2013.

The Way of the Cross complex also includes a cave temple, above which the figure of the Mother of God is installed, as well as the spring of the Virgin Mary.

The Museum of Weaving and Carpet Making was opened in 2016 in Hlyniany, which at the end of the 19th century became one of the centers of the development of weaving and carpet making in Halychyna, when the weaving factory "Tovarystvo tkatske" was founded here.

In interwar times, it became famous as Mykhailo Hamul's factory, which produced carpets based on the sketches of prominent Ukrainian modernist artists. After the Second World War, it became the factory of art products "Victory". Until it closed in the mid-1990s, the factory produced carpets, tablecloths and bedspreads. In order to preserve the carpet-making traditions of Hlyniany, a multi-purpose educational and production complex "Mosaic" was created in Hlyniany, a part of which became the Museum of Weaving and Carpet-Making. The exposition presents carpets based on the drawings of artists Vasyl Tsyon, Pavlo Kovzhun, Sofiya Stryenska. Also on display is a carpet, which in 1947 refugees from Bukovyna exchanged for a bag of wheat to save themselves from starvation.

Workshops on weaving and carpet making are held on the basis of the museum.

The Museum of Weaving and Carpet Making in Hlyniany is a subdivision of the Historical and Local History Museum of Vynnyky. The exhibition will soon move to a new premises at Svyatoho Mykolaya Street, 10.

The cave cult complex of the White Croats tribe in the village of Dubrova is part of the Historical and Cultural Reserve "Stilsko Settlement". In the 8th-10th centuries, it was one of the centers of pagan cults in the capital of White Croatia in Stilsko.

The complex is a rock of limestone-sandstone origin with 21 man-made caves carved into it. All interior rooms have the correct shape, narrow entrances simultaneously serve as windows. In the walls of individual caves there are sunken square or rectangular niches. Presumably, at first, pagan worshipers lived in the caves-cells, and with the advent of Christianity, wandering monks. Nowadays, local residents have turned the cells into cellars, installed doors, hung locks and store food in them.

To the left of the cave complex is the "Dyravets Stone" or "Table Stone", which received these names because it has a large through hole, and its upper surface is flat, like a table. This megalithic stone is also called the Sun Temple. Presumably, an idol once stood on it, and the remains of altars can still be seen at its foot, so the stone clearly had a cult purpose.

The remains of another pre-Christian sanctuary can be traced on the rock to the right.

The valley of wild tulips is located on the southwestern outskirts of the village of Nadytichi in the floodplain of the Dniester and Rybnytsya rivers.

In this unique place, wild tulips of the Red Listed grouse grow. Due to barbaric extermination, their population is rapidly decreasing.

The Valley of Wild Tulips blooms for a short time (about a week) at the end of April - beginning of May.

The little-known Yablonovsky-Brunytsky estate in Pidhirtsi near Stryi is a well-preserved palace and park complex of the 18th-19th centuries, an architectural monument of local importance. It is now in private ownership and is being revived by volunteers as a tourist attraction.

The country palace in the ancestral estate in Pidhirtsi was founded in 1734 by Yuzef Aleksander Yablonovsky on the site of an old hunting castle that had existed here since the 17th century. The building was built by the architect Bernard (perhaps Bernard Meretyn) according to the principles of the French country house maison de plaisance. The palace was luxuriously furnished, had a library of 1,000 volumes and a gallery of portraits of Polish hetmans.

In 1815, Pidhirtsi became the property of the Brunytsky family, which owned the estate until 1939. At the end of the 19th century, Yulian Brunytsky reconstructed the palace in the Romanesque-Gothic style according to the project of the Chernivtsi architect Karl Romstorfer. The building was electrified and provided with water supply, dishes and products from the kitchen in the basement were lifted to the dining room by a special elevator. There were many farm buildings around, as Brunytsky was seriously engaged in agriculture, in particular, he created a nursery for fruit and ornamental trees.

The palace is surrounded by a park with an area of 8.2 hectares, which is a monument of horticultural art of national importance - it is considered one of the first arboretums in Galicia.

During Soviet times, the Yablonovsky-Brunytsky palace was turned into a boarding school, and later into a trout farm. For many years, the building stood empty and fell into disrepair, although it was privatized back in the 2000s.

Since 2014, the palace has belonged to three local families, who have been successively reviving the architectural landmark. A number of emergency works were carried out, the interiors of ten rooms were partially restored. The owners conduct tours and provide space for photo shoots.

The Yavoriv National Nature Park was created in 1998 on the basis of the landscape park of the same name and the adjacent territories of the Starychiv and Maheriv Military Forest Farms.

The area of the park is 7 thousand hectares. The territory stretches like a crescent from the village of Vereshchytsia (Yavoriv district) to the village of Krekhiv (Lviv district). In the south, the national nature park borders the "Roztochchya" nature reserve, and in the north - with the Yavoriv training ground. There are 13 settlements near the park, but none of them are within the park boundaries.

The flora of the Yavoriv National Nature Park includes 707 plant species, of which 20 species are listed in the Red Book of Ukraine. The vertebrate fauna of the park includes 289 species, including 24 species of fish, 11 species of amphibians, 6 species of reptiles, 200 species of birds and 48 species of mammals. The most numerous species of mammals are the European roe deer, wild boar, rusak hare, fox, squirrel, marten, wood ferret, raccoon dog, and from those listed in the Red Book - European mink, ermine, badger. Red deer and elk occasionally enter the territory of the park from neighboring massifs.

The region in which the Yavoriv National Natural Park is located is rich in archaeological and historical and cultural monuments. A number of primitive man's sites and hillforts of the princely period have been discovered here.

Picturesque clearings and abandoned orchards are often found among the forest massifs - a memory of the former villages and hamlets that were evicted during the creation of the Yavoriv landfill.

The park has a number of pedestrian and car routes, ecological and educational trails, equipped with stationary areas for recreation.

The Museum of Arts and Crafts of the Yavoriv Region and Yavoriv Painting was created on the basis of the Yosyp Stanko Art Vocational School in Ivano-Frankove.

The exposition began to take shape in 1958, when the school was still working in Yavoriv. The museum exhibits many decorative plates decorated with Yavoriv Painting, flat-relief carvings, relief carvings, openwork-relief carvings; candlesticks; Yavoriv boxes; pendants from various plates; furniture with Yavoriv carvings, including two chess tables with chess pieces.

Numerous easel carvings on fairy-tale themes, sculptural portraits of Ivan Franko and Bohdan Khmelnytsky are presented.

A monument to the famous Galician Yuriy Kulchytskyi was opened in Lviv in 2013.

Yuriy Kulchytskyi, a native of the village of Kulchytsi, Sambir district, became famous during the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. Disguised as a Turk, he managed to sneak out of the besieged city through the Turkish camp and convey the news to the Allies, thanks to which the city received military aid, and the Turks were soon defeated at the Battle of Vienna.

According to legend, as a reward, Kulchytskyi asked to give him 300 bags of trophy Turkish coffee, which at that time was practically unknown in Europe. Having such a significant supply of product, the enterprising Galician opened the first coffee shop in Austria, "Under the Blue Flask". He is considered the inventor of the classic Viennese coffee recipe (with cream and sugar).

The people of Lviv are sure that Kulchytskyi also delivered coffee beans to Lviv, and since then coffee has become a cult drink in the city.

The monument to Saint Yuriy (George) Zmiyeborts (the Snake Fighter) in Lviv is dedicated to law enforcement officers of Ukraine who died in the line of duty.

Installed in 1999 in the center of General Hryhorenko Square, next to the administration building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The authors of the monument are sculptors Andriy and Volodymyr Sukhorski, architect Oleksandr Yarema.

The bronze monument depicts the canonical Yuriy Zmiyeborts on a saddled horse, impaling an attacking snake with a spear.

The oldest part of Belz, at the confluence of the Rechytsya stream with the Solokiya river at the entrance to the city from the Velyki Mosty side, is called Zamochok, because it was here that the historic Belz castle was located. Its first wooden fortifications were erected in the 11th century, but soon the city was destroyed by the Mongol-Tatars.

During the Lithuanian-Polish times, the castle was revived. It remained wooden, but was strengthened by powerful earth ramparts and protected by a defensive moat, the traces of which can still be traced. The castle has not been preserved to this day, but later religious buildings remind of it, giving the territory of the Zamochok a romantic look.

In 1906-1911, the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built on the castle grounds in the Art Nouveau style with Neo-Gothic elements, according to the project of the architect Kalikst Krzyzhanowski (now it is the church of Saint Nicholas of the OCU).

In 1933-1938, the architect Witold Rawski completed the complex of sacred buildings at the Zamochok. Next to the church, he built a belfry in the form of a castle tower in the Art Nouveau style with elements of romanticism. One of the historical coats of arms of Belz in the form of a griffin is placed on its facade. Another coat of arms of Belz - a harmash with a cannon - can be seen on the triarch entrance gate. The chapel of Saint Valentyn and the Way of the Cross were also built in the modern style in the form of a brick fence with small chapel towers resembling defensive walls.

The complex of sacred buildings of the Zamochok tract is part of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve in the city of Belz.

Zhovkva Castle is an outstanding architectural monument of the Renaissance era, the main element of the fortification system of the "ideal city" of Zhovkva. The building is partially museumized, restoration is in progress.

The construction of the castle in Zhovkva began in 1594 by the city's founder Stanisław Żółkiewski, the author of the first project was Pavlo Shchaslyvy. The castle is quadrangular, with towers located at the corners, connected by covered galleries with two-story buildings. The entrance with the Serlian portal is fortified by a four-story tower. In the courtyard there is a palace and office premises. In 1606, the "Zvirynets" garden was built, in which bison, deer and fallow deer were bred for hunting.

At the end of the 17th century, Zhovkva Castle was the summer residence of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski, and became one of the richest royal palaces in Europe (in 1676, celebrations were held here in honor of Sobieski's victory over the Turks near Vienna). Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Tsar Peter I stayed in the palace. Later, the castle became the property of the city.

Until recently, various municipal institutions, a school and even residential apartments were located here.

Now the Zhovkva Castle Museum-Reserve is a branch of the Lviv National Art Gallery. A museum exposition has been opened in the eastern building, which acquaints visitors with the history of the city, the development of Zhovkiv fortifications, as well as outstanding personalities who lived or visited Zhovkiv. The new exposition is dedicated to the events of the Revolution of Dignity and the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The Zhydachiv Land Museum is part of the Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky Memorial Museum, which in turn is part of the Lviv National Art Gallery. Since 2013, the museum has been located in the premises of the former school in Zhydachiv.

The museum presents the most important events of the historical and cultural life of Zhydachiv - the chronicle Udech, the first written mention of which dates back to 1164. In particular, archaeological finds discovered during research on the territory of the former Zhydachiv Castle (XI-XIV centuries) and Castle Hill (XIV-XVI centuries) are exhibited. Among them: the Polovtsian idol of the VI-VII centuries, fragments of Cossack weapons, tools, iron, copper, stone products, etc.

Models of ancient castles that existed in Zhydachiv, as well as models of many other famous architectural monuments of Ukraine, are presented.

The exposition highlights the life and activities of famous historical figures associated with the Zhydachiv region. Among them are portraits and copies of portraits of the Danylovych, Zhevusky, Khodorivsky, Vyhovsky and other Cossack hetmans. The art gallery presents paintings and sculptures by famous Ukrainian artists of the 20th century. The permanent exhibition "Folk Embroidery of the Zhydachiv Region" displays the best examples of folk art of the middle of the 20th century.