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Lviv ( or ; ; ; see below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine. Lviv also hosts the administration of Lviv urban hromada. It was named after Leo I of Galicia, the eldest son of Daniel, King of Ruthenia.
Lviv (then Lwów) emerged as the centre of the historical regions of Red Ruthenia and Galicia in the 14th century, superseding Halych, Chełm, Belz, and Przemyśl. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia–VolhyniaPerfecky, George A. (1973). The Galician-Volynian Chronicle. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. from 1272 to 1340, when it went to King Casimir III the Great of Poland in a war of succession. In 1356, Casimir the Great granted it town rights. From 1434, it was the regional capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship in the Kingdom of Poland. In 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, the city became the capital of the Habsburg semi-autonomous Polish-dominated Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. From 1918, between the wars, the city was the centre of the Lwów Voivodeship in the Second Polish Republic. There it flourished in culture, industry and academia such as the Lwów School of Mathematics, the Lwów Historical School () and the Lwów School of Economics. After the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, the massacre of Lwów professors took place, and Lwów was eventually annexed by the Soviet Union.
The once-large Jewish community of the city was murdered in large numbers by the Nazi Germany and Ukrainian police during the Holocaust. For decades there was no working synagogue in Lviv after the final one was closed by the Soviets. The greater part of the once-predominant Polish population was forcibly expelled during the Ukrainian massacres of Poles and later with population transfers between Communist Poland and Soviet Ukraine in 1944–46.
The historical heart of the city, with its cobblestone streets and architectural assortment of Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classicism and Art Nouveau, survived Soviet and German occupations during World War II largely unscathed. The historic city centre is on the UNESCO World Heritage List; however, it has been listed as an endangered site due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 1991, Lviv became part of the independent nation of Ukraine.
The city has many industries and institutions of higher education, such as Lviv University and Lviv Polytechnic. Lviv is also the home of many cultural institutions, including a philharmonic orchestra and the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet.
The coat of arms, the banner of the Lviv City Council and the logo, are the officially approved symbols of Lviv. The names or images of architectural and historical monuments are also considered symbols of the city by the Statute of Lviv.
Lviv's modern coat of arms is based on the coat of arms from the city seal in the middle of the 14th century—a stone gate with three towers, and in the opening of the gate walks a golden lion. Lviv's large coat of arms is a shield, with the coat of arms of the city, crowned with a silver crown with three edges, held by a lion and an ancient warrior.
Lviv's flag is a blue square banner with an image of the city emblem and with yellow and blue triangles at the edges.
Lviv's logo is an image of five colorful towers in Lviv and the slogan "Lviv — open to the world" under them. The Latin phrase Semper fidelis ('Always faithful') was used as a motto on the former coat of arms of 1936–1939 but was no longer used after the Second World War.
Earlier there was a settlement in the form of a borough with a characteristic layout element—an elongated market square. Daniel's foundation of the stronghold was its next reconstruction after the Batu Khan invasion of 1240.Vołodymyr Vujcyk, Derżavnyj Istoryczno-Architekturnyj Zapovidnyk u L’vovi, Lviv 1991, p. 9, w: Łukasz Walczy, Początki Lwowa w świetle najnowszych badań, w: Lwów wśród nas, pt. 2, 2006, p. 20–21.Jan Buraczyński, Roztocze – dzieje osadnictwa, Lublin 2008, p. 73.
Lviv was invaded by the Mongols in 1261. Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. 6th edition, vol. 12, Leipzig and Vienna 1908, p. 397-398. Various sources relate the events, which range from the destruction of the castle to a complete razing of the town. All sources agree that it was on the orders of the Mongol general Boroldai. The Shevchenko Scientific Society says that Burundai issued the order to raze the city. The Galician-Volhynian chronicle states that in 1261 "Said Buronda to Vasylko: 'Since you are at peace with me then raze all your castles'". Basil Dmytryshyn states that the order was implied to be the fortifications as a whole: "If you wish to have peace with me, then destroy all your towns".
After Daniel's death, King Lev rebuilt the town around 1270, choosing Lviv as his residence, and made it the capital of Galicia-Volhynia.B.V. Melnyk, Vulytsiamy starovynnoho Lvova, Vyd-vo "Svit" (Old Lviv Streets), 2001, Around 1280 Armenians lived in Galicia and were mainly based in Lviv where they had their own archbishop. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaft und Künste, edited by Johann Samuel Ersch and Johann Gottfried Gruber. Vol. 5, Leipzig 1820, p. 358, footnote 18 (in German).
In the 13th and early 14th centuries, Lviv was largely a wooden city, except for its several Galician-style stone churches. Some of them, like the Church of Saint Nicholas, have survived, although in a thoroughly rebuilt form. The town was inherited by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1340 and ruled by voivode Dmytro Dedko, the favourite of the Lithuanian prince Liubartas, until 1349.
The city and region was a destination of 50,000 Armenians fleeing from the Seljuk Empire and Mongol invasions of Armenia.
Casimir built a new city center (or founded a new town) in a basin, surrounded it by walls, and replaced the wooden palace by masonry castle – one of the two built by him. The old (Ruthenian) settlement, after it had been rebuilt, became known as the Krakovian Suburb in reference to the city of Kraków.
After Casimir had died in 1370, he was succeeded as king of Poland by his nephew, King Louis I of Hungary, who in 1372 put Lwów together with the region of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia under the administration of his relative Vladislaus II of Opole, Duke of Opole. When in 1387 Władysław retreated from the post of its governor, Galicia-Volhynia became occupied by Hungary, but soon Jadwiga, the youngest daughter of Louis, and also the ruler of Poland and wife of King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło, unified it directly with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
The city's prosperity during the following centuries is owed to the trade privileges granted to it by Casimir, Queen Jadwiga, and the subsequent Polish monarchs. Germans, Poles and Czechs formed the largest groups of newcomers. Most of the settlers were Polonization by the end of the 15th century, and the city became a Polish island surrounded by the Ruthenian Orthodox population.Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki. A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 32. In 1356, the Armenian diocese was founded centered at the Armenian Cathedral. Lwów was one of two main cultural and religious centers of Armenians in Poland alongside Kamieniec Podolski.
In the early modern period, it also became one of the largest concentrations of Scots and Italians in Poland.In 1412, the local archdiocese has developed into the Roman Catholic Metropolis, which since 1375 as Diocese had been in Halych. The new metropolis included regional diocese in Lwów, Przemyśl, Chełm, Włodzimierz, Lutsk, Kamieniec, as well as Siret and Kyiv (see Old Cathedral of St. Sophia, Kyiv). The first Catholic Archbishop who resided in Lwów was Jan Rzeszowski.
In 1434, the Ruthenian domain of the Crown was transformed into the Ruthenian Voivodeship. In 1444, the city was granted the staple right, which resulted in its growing prosperity and wealth, as it became one of the major trading centres on the merchant routes between Central Europe and Black Sea region. It was also transformed into one of the main fortresses of the kingdom. As one of the largest and most influential royal city of Poland, it enjoyed voting rights in the Royal elections in Poland, alongside other major cities such as Kraków, Poznań, Warsaw or Gdańsk. Polska Encyklopedia Szlachecka, t. I, Warsaw 1935, p. 42 During the 17th century, it was the second largest city of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with a population of about 30,000.
In 1572, one of the first publishers of books in what is now Ukraine, Ivan Fedorov, a graduate of the University of Kraków, settled here for a brief period. The city became a significant centre for Eastern Orthodoxy with the establishment of an Orthodox brotherhood, a Greek-Slavonic school, and a printer which published the first full versions of the Bible in Church Slavonic in 1580. A Jesuit Collegium was founded in 1608, and on 20 January 1661 King John II Casimir of Poland issued a decree granting it "the honour of the academy and the title of the university".
The 17th century brought invading armies of Swedish Empire, Hungary,Cathal J. Nolan. Wars of the Age of Louis XIV, 1650–1715: An Encyclopaedia of Global Warfare and Civilization. ABC-CLIO. 2008. pp. 332, 368.Tony Jaques. Dictionary of Battles and Sieges: A Guide to 8,500 Battles from Antiquity through the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 3. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2007. pp. 608, 895, 951 Ottoman Empire,Francis Ludwig Carsten. The New Cambridge Modern History: The Ascendancy of France, 1648–88. Cambridge University Press. 1961. p. 512.Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki. A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge University Press. 2001. p. 81. Cambridge University Press. 2001. p. 81. Russians and Cossacks to its gates. In 1648 an army of Cossacks and Crimean Tatars besieged the town. They captured the High Castle, murdering its defenders. The city itself was not sacked due to the fact that the leader of the revolution Bohdan Khmelnytsky accepted a ransom of 250,000 ducats, and the Cossacks marched north-west towards Zamość. It was one of two major cities in Poland which was not captured during the so-called Deluge: the other one was Gdańsk.
At that time, Lwów witnessed a historic scene, as here King John II Casimir made his famous Lwów Oath. On 1 April 1656, during a holy mass in Lwów's Cathedral conducted by the papal legate Pietro Vidoni, John Casimir in a grandiose and elaborate ceremony entrusted the Commonwealth under the Blessed Virgin Mary's protection, whom he announced as The Queen of the Polish Crown and other of his countries.
In 1672, it was surrounded by the Ottoman Empire who also failed to conquer it. Three years later, the Battle of Lwów (1675) took place near the city. Lwów was captured for the first time since the Middle Ages by a foreign army in 1704, when Swedish Army under King Charles XII entered the city after a short siege. The plague of the early 18th century caused the death of about 10,000 inhabitants (40% of the city's population).Karl-Erik Frandsen. The Last Plague in the Baltic Region, 1709–1713. Museum Tuseulanum Press. 2010. p. 20.
During Habsburg rule, Lviv became one of the most important Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish cultural centres. In Lviv, according to the Austrian census of 1910, which listed religion and language, 51% of the city's population was Roman Catholics, 28% Jews, and 19% belonged to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Linguistically, 86% of the city's population used the Polish language and 11% preferred Ruthenian.
In 1773, the first newspaper in Lemberg, Gazette de Leopoli, began to be published. In 1784, a Latin language university was opened with lectures in German language, Polish language and even Ruthenian; after closing in 1805, it was reopened in 1817. By 1825, German became the sole language of instruction. Lemberg University was opened by Maria Theresa in 1784. By 1787, her successor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor opened "Studium Ruthenum" for students who did not know enough Latin to take regular courses.
During the 19th century, the Austrian administration attempted to Germanisation the city's educational and governmental institutions. Many cultural organisations which did not have a pro-German orientation were closed. After the revolutions of 1848, the language of instruction at the university shifted from German to include Ukrainian and Polish. Around that time, a certain sociolect developed in the city known as the Lwów dialect. Considered to be a type of Polish dialect, it draws its roots from numerous other languages besides Polish. In 1853, as were introduced by Ignacy Łukasiewicz and Jan Zeh. Then in 1858, these were updated to Gas lighting, and in 1900 to Electric light.
After the so-called "Ausgleich" of February 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into a dualist Austria-Hungary and a slow yet steady process of liberalisation of Austrian rule in Galicia started. From 1873, Galicia was de facto an autonomous province of Austria-Hungary, with Polish and Ruthenian as official languages. Germanisation was halted and censorship lifted as well. Galicia was subject to the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy, but the Galician Sejm and provincial administration, both established in Lviv, had extensive privileges and prerogatives, especially in education, culture, and local affairs. In 1894, the General National Exhibition was held in Lviv. The city started to grow rapidly, becoming the fourth largest in Austria-Hungary, according to the census of 1910. Many Belle Époque public edifices and tenement houses were erected, with many of the buildings from the Austrian period, such as the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, built in the Vienna neo-Renaissance style.
At that time, Lviv was home to a number of renowned Polish-language institutions, such as the Ossolineum, with the second-largest collection of Polish books in the world, the Polish Academy of Arts, the National Museum (since 1908), the Historical Museum of the City of Lwów (since 1891), the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists, the Polish Historical Society, Lviv University, with Polish as the official language since 1882, the Lwów Scientific Society, the Lwów Art Gallery, the Polish Theatre, and the Polish Archdiocese.
Furthermore, Lviv was the centre of a number of Polish independence organisations. In June 1908, Józef Piłsudski, Władysław Sikorski and Kazimierz Sosnkowski founded the Union of Active Struggle in the city. Two years later, the paramilitary organisation, called the Riflemen's Association, was also founded in the city by Polish activists.
At the same time, Lviv became the city where famous Ukrainian writers (such as Ivan Franko, Panteleimon Kulish and Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky) published their work. It was a centre of Ukrainian cultural revival. The city also housed the largest and most influential Ukrainian institutions in the world, including the Prosvita society dedicated to spreading literacy in the Ukrainian language, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the Dniester Insurance Company and base of the Ukrainian cooperative movement, and it served as the seat of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. However, the Polish-dominated city council blocked Ukrainian attempts to create visible monuments for their own. The most important streets had names referring to Polish history and literature, and only minor roads referred to Ukrainians.
Lviv was also a major centre of Jewish culture, in particular as a centre of the Yiddish language, and was the home of the world's first Yiddish-language daily newspaper, the Lemberger Togblat, established in 1904.Paul Robert Magocsi. (2005) Galicia: a Multicultured Land. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp.12–15
The town was retaken by Austria-Hungary in June of the following year during the Gorlice–Tarnów offensive. Lviv and its population, therefore, suffered greatly during the First World War as many of the offensives were fought across its local geography causing significant collateral damage and disruption.
The Ukrainian forces withdrew outside Lwów's confines by 21 November 1918, after which elements of Polish soldiers began to loot and burn much of the Jewish and Ukrainian quarters of the city, killing approximately 340 civilians (see: Lwów pogrom). The pogromists were tried by Polish authorities and three were executed.Norman Davies. "Ethnic Diversity in Twentieth-Century Poland." In: Herbert Arthur Strauss. Hostages of Modernisation: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870–1933/39. Walter de Gruyter, 1993. The retreating Ukrainian forces besieged the city. The Sich riflemen reformed into the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA). The Polish forces aided from central Poland, including General Haller's Blue Army, equipped by the French, relieved the besieged city in May 1919 forcing the UHA to the east.
Despite Entente mediation attempts to cease hostilities and reach a compromise between belligerents the Polish–Ukrainian War continued until July 1919 when the last UHA forces withdrew east of the Zbruch River. The border on the River Zbruch was confirmed at the Treaty of Warsaw, when in April 1920 Field Marshal Piłsudski signed an agreement with Symon Petliura where it was agreed that in exchange for military support against Bolsheviks the Ukrainian People's Republic renounced its claims to the territories of Eastern Galicia.
In August 1920, Lviv was attacked by the Red Army under the command of Aleksandr Yegorov and Joseph Stalin during the Polish–Soviet War but the city repelled the attack.Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red star. Polish-Soviet War For the courage of its inhabitants Lviv was awarded the Virtuti Militari cross by Józef Piłsudski on 22 November 1920.
On 23 February 1921, the council of the League of Nations declared that Galicia (including the city) lay outside the territory of Poland and that Poland did not have the mandate to establish administrative control in that country, and that Poland was merely the occupying military power of Galicia (as a whole), whose sovereign remained the Allied Powers and fate would be determined by the Council of Ambassadors at the League of Nations. Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia (1963). Edited by Volodymyr Kubiyovych. p. 780. On 14 March 1923, the Council of Ambassadors decided that Galicia would be incorporated into Poland "whereas it is recognised by Poland that ethnographical conditions necessitate an autonomous regime in the Eastern Galicia." This provision was never honoured by the interwar Polish government. After 1923, the region was internationally recognized as part of the Polish state.
While about two-thirds of the city's inhabitants were Poles, some of whom spoke the characteristic Lwów dialect, the eastern part of the Lwów Voivodeship had a relative Ukrainian majority in most of its rural areas. Polish authorities were obliged through international agreements to provide Eastern Galicia with autonomy (including the creation of a separate Ukrainian university in Lwów), and even though a bill was enacted the Polish Sejm in September 1922, this was not fulfilled.
The Polish government discontinued many Ukrainian schools which functioned during the Austrian rule, and closed down Ukrainian departments at the University of Lwów with the exception of one. Prewar Lwów also had a large and thriving Jews, which constituted about a quarter of the population, but were accused of having collaborated with the Ukrainians.
Unlike in Austrian times, when the size and number of public parades or other cultural expressions corresponded to each cultural group's relative population, the Polish government emphasised the Polish nature of the city and limited public displays of Jewish culture and Ukrainian culture. Military parades and commemorations of battles at particular streets within the city, all celebrating the Polish forces who fought against the Ukrainians in 1918, became frequent, and in the 1930s a vast memorial monument and burial ground of Polish soldiers from that conflict was built in the city's Lychakiv Cemetery. On the other hand, Ukrainians strove to create their own memorial culture in the town. An underground military organization attacked Polish institutions, as well as Polish politicians.
The only change over imposed by the Soviets was the language of instruction, with the actual net loss of about 1,000 schools in short order. Ukrainian was made compulsory in the University of Lviv with almost all its books in Polish. It became thoroughly Ukrainization and was renamed after Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko. Polish academics were laid off.Paul Robert Magocsi. (1996). A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Soviet rule turned out to be much more oppressive than Polish rule; the rich world of Ukrainian publications in Polish Lwów, for instance, was gone in Soviet Lviv, and many journalism jobs were lost with it.
During the occupation of the city, the Germans committed numerous atrocities, including the killing of Polish university professors in 1941. German Nazis viewed the Ukrainian Galicians, former inhabitants of Austrian Crown Land, as more and civilised than the Ukrainian population living in the territories belonging to the Soviet Union before 1939. As a result, they escaped the full extent of German acts in comparison to Ukrainians who lived to the east, in the German-occupied Soviet Ukraine turned into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
According to the The Holocaust, local Jews then became the main target of German repressions in the region. Following the German occupation, the Jewish population was concentrated in the Lwów Ghetto established in the city's Zamarstynów (today Zamarstyniv) district and the Janowska concentration camp was also set up. In the Janowska concentration camp, the Nazis conducted torture and executions to music. The Lviv National Opera members, who were prisoners, played one and the same tune, Tango of Death.
On the eve of Lviv's liberation, German Nazis ordered 40 orchestra musicians to form a circle. The security ringed the musicians tightly and ordered them to play. First, the orchestra conductor, Mund, was executed. Then the commandant ordered the musicians to come to the center of the circle one by one, put their instruments onto the ground and strip naked, after which they were killed by a headshot. A photo of the orchestra players was one of the incriminating documents at the Nuremberg trials.
In 1931 there were 75,316 Yiddish-speaking inhabitants, but by 1941 approximately 100,000 Jews were present in Lviv. The majority of these Jews were either killed within the city or deported to Belzec extermination camp. In the summer of 1943, on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel was tasked with the destruction of any evidence of Nazi mass murders in the Lviv area. On 15 June Blobel, using forced labourers from Janowska, dug up a number of mass graves and incinerated the remains.Gilbert, M. (1989), Second World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 438
Later, on 19 November 1943, inmates at Janowska staged an uprising and attempted a mass escape. A few succeeded, but most were recaptured and killed. The Schutzstaffel staff and their local auxiliaries then, at the time of the Janowska camp's liquidation, murdered at least 6,000 more inmates, as well as the Jews in other forced labour camps in Galicia. By the end of the war, the Jewish population of the city was virtually eliminated, with only around 200 to 800 survivors remaining.Filip Friedman, Zagłada Żydów lwowskich (Extermination of the Jews of Lwów) – online in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian
Those arrested were released only after they had signed papers in which they agreed to emigrate to Poland, which postwar borders were to be shifted westwards in accordance with the Yalta Conference settlements. In Yalta, despite Polish objections, the Allied leaders, Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill decided that Lwów should remain within the borders of the Soviet Union. Roosevelt wanted Poland to have Lwów and the surrounding oilfields, but Stalin refused to allow it.
On 16 August 1945, a border agreementwikisource:Umowa graniczna pomiędzy Polską a ZSRR z 16 sierpnia 1945 roku [9] full text of the agreement was signed in Moscow between the government of the Soviet Union and the Provisional Government of National Unity installed by the Soviets in Poland. In the treaty, Polish authorities formally cession the prewar eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union, agreeing to the Polish-Soviet border to be drawn according to the Curzon Line. Consequently, the agreement was ratification on 5 February 1946.
Many Polish pieces of art and sculpture can be found in Lviv galleries, among them works by Jan Piotr Norblin, Marcello Bacciarelli, Kazimierz Wojniakowski, Antoni Brodowski, Henryk Rodakowski, Artur Grottger, Jan Matejko, Aleksander Gierymski, Jan Stanisławski, Leon Wyczółkowski, Józef Chełmoński, Józef Mehoffer, Stanisław Wyspiański, Olga Boznańska, Władysław Słowiński, Jacek Malczewski. Poles who stayed in Lviv formed the organisation the Association of Polish Culture of the Lviv Land.
According to various estimates, Lviv lost between 80% and 90% of its prewar population.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the city expanded both in population and size mostly due to the city's rapidly growing industrial base. Due to the fight of SMERSH with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Lviv obtained a nickname with a negative connotation: Banderstadt, meaning the city of Stepan Bandera. The German suffix for the city stadt was added instead of the Russian grad to imply alienation. Over the years the residents of the city found this so ridiculous that even people not familiar with Bandera accepted it as sarcasm in reference to the Soviet perception of western Ukraine. In the period of Perestroika in the 1980s, the city became the centre of political movements advocating Ukrainian independence from the USSR. By the time of the fall of the Soviet Union the name became a proud mark for the Lviv natives culminating in the creation of a local rock band under the name Khloptsi z Bandershtadtu (Boys from Banderstadt).
On 17 September 1989 Lviv saw the largest rally in support of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, gathering some 100,000 participants.
In support of the Euromaidan movement, Lviv's executive committee declared itself independent of the rule of President Viktor Yanukovych on 19 February 2014.
In 2019, the citizens of Lviv strongly supported Petro Poroshenko over Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. The percentage of votes counted for Poroshenko was more than 90%. Despite this level of support in Lviv, he lost the national vote.
Until 18 July 2020, Lviv was incorporated as a city of oblast significance and the center of Lviv Municipality. The municipality was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Lviv Oblast to seven. The area of Lviv Municipality was merged into the newly established Lviv Raion.
During the course of the war, the area in and around Lviv has been struck by Russian missile attacks. Yavoriv military training base was struck on 13 March 2022, the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant near the Lviv Danylo Halytskyi International Airport on 18 March 2022, and a fuel depot and other facilities within the city limits on 26 March 2022.
On 18 April 2022, the city was hit by five missile strikes, killing seven civilians and wounding 11, according to mayor Andriy Sadovyi. Regional governor Maksym Kozystkiy said that the targets were military factories and a tyre shop. A hotel housing evacuees was also hit, damaging its windows. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed that all locations were struck by Russian missiles during the night of 18 April were military targets.
Lviv was targeted during the 10 October 2022 missile strikes on Ukraine, resulting in a city-wide blackout. On 11 October 2022, Sadovyi announced that the city was hit by a missile strike, resulting in a power outage and water supply shortage.
The old Defensive wall was at the foothills of the High Castle on the banks of the Poltva River. In the 13th century, the river was used to transport goods. In the early 20th century, the Poltva was covered over in areas where it flows through the city; the river flows directly beneath Lviv's central street, , and the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet.
Notable suburbs include Vynnyky (Винники), Briukhovychi (Брюховичі), and Rudno (Рудно).
| 50.4% |
| 31.9% |
| 15.9% |
| 88.1% |
| 8.9% |
| 0.3% |
| 0.9% |
| Ukrainians | 88.1% | ||
| Russians | 8.9% | ||
| Jews | 0.3% | ||
| Polish people | 0.9% | ||
| Belarusians | 0.4% | ||
| Armenians | 0.1% | ||
| Total | |||
| Numbers do not include regions nor the surrounding towns.Official census of 2001. | |||
| 77.2% |
| 19.9% |
| 2.9% |
| Ukrainian | 88.48% |
| Russian | 9.95% |
| Other or undecided | 1.57% |
| Total | 100.00% |
According to one survey conducted by the International Republican Institute in mid-2023, 96% of the city's inhabitants spoke Ukrainian at home, while 3% of them spoke Russian.
| + Historical Polish population | ||
| 1921 | 112,000 | 51 |
| 1989 | 9,5001.2% of 790,908 | 1.2 |
| 2001 | 6,400 | 0.9 |
Ethnic Poles and the Polish Jews began to settle in Lwów in considerable numbers already in 1349 after the city was conquered by King Casimir of the Piast dynasty. Lwów served as Poland's major cultural and economic centre for several centuries, during the Polish Golden Age, and until the partitions of Poland perpetrated by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In the Second Polish Republic, the Lwów Voivodeship (inhabited by 2,789,000 people in 1921) grew to 3,126,300 inhabitants in ten years.
As a result of World War II, Lviv was de-Polonised, mainly through Soviet-arranged population exchange in 1944–1946 but also by early deportations to Siberia. Those who remained on their own volition after the border shift became a small ethnic minority in Lviv. By 1959 Poles made up only 4% of the local population. Many families were mixed. During the Soviet decades only two Polish schools continued to function: No. 10 (with 8 grades) and No. 24 (with 10 grades).
In the 1980s the process of uniting groups into ethnic associations was allowed. In 1988 a Polish-language newspaper was permitted ( Gazeta Lwowska). Polish Embassy The Poles in Lviv continue to be proud of their identity, accessed 21:05, 29 October 2009 The Polish population of the city continues to use the dialect of the Polish language known as Lwów dialect ().
An association of Poles named White Eagle was founded in Lviv in 2011.
Before the The Holocaust about one-third of the city's population was made up of Jews (more than 140,000 on the eve of World War II). This number swelled to about 240,000 by the end of 1940 as tens of thousands of Jews fled from the Nazi-occupied parts of Poland into the relative (and temporary) sanctuary of Soviet-occupied Poland (including Lviv) following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact that divided Poland into Nazi and Soviet zones in 1939. Most of the Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust. Meanwhile, the Nazis also destroyed the Jewish cemetery, which was subsequently "paved over by the Soviets".
Due to the Holocaust and migration, the original Jewish population of the city all but vanished. After the war, the remnant was replenished by a newer Jewish population, formed from among the hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians who migrated to the city. The post-war Jewish population peaked at 30,000 in the 1970s. Currently, the Jewish population has shrunk considerably as a result of emigration (mainly to Israel and the United States) and, to a lesser degree, assimilation, and is estimated to number a few thousand. A number of organisations continue to be active. The Sholem Aleichem Jewish Culture Society in Lviv initiated the construction of a monument to the victims of the ghetto in 1988. On 23 August 1992, the memorial complex to the victims of the Lwów ghetto (1941–1943) was officially opened. During 2011–2012, some Antisemitism acts against the memorial took place. On 20 March 2011, it was reported that the slogan "death to the Jews" with a swastika was sprayed on the monument. On 21 March 2012, the memorial was vandalized by unknown individuals, in what seemed to be an Antisemitism act.
The total revenue of the city budget of Lviv for 2015 was set at about UAH 3.81 billion, which was 23% more than a year earlier (UAH 2.91 billion in 2014). As of 10 November 2017, the deputies of the Lviv City Council approved a budget in amount of UAH 5.4 billion ($204 million), most of which (UAH 5.12 billion) was the revenue of the fund of Lviv.
The average wage in Lviv in 2015 in the business sector amounted to 14,041 UAH, in the budget sphere – 9,475 UAH. On 1 February 2014, registered unemployment was 0.6%. Lviv is one of the largest cities in Ukraine and is growing rapidly. According to the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine the monthly average salary in Lviv is a little less than the average for Ukraine which in February 2013 was 6050 UAH ($755). According to the World Bank classification Lviv is a middle class city. In June 2019, the average wage amounted to 23,000 UAH ($920), which was 18.9% more than in the previous year.
Lviv has 218 large industrial Business, more than 40 commercial banks, 4 exchanges, 13 investment companies, 80 insurance and 24 leasing companies, 77 audit firms and almost 9,000 small ventures. For many years machinery-building and electronics were leading industries in Lviv. The city-based public company Electron, trademark of national manufacturing, produces the 32 and 37-inches liquid-crystal TV-sets. The Electrontrans specializes in design and production of modern Electric vehicle including , , , and spare parts. In 2013 Elektrotrans JV started producing low-floor trams, the first Ukrainian 100% low-floor tramways. LAZ is a bus manufacturing company in Lviv with its own rich history. Founded in 1945, LAZ started bus production in the early 1950s. Innovative design ideas of Lviv engineers have become the world standard in bus manufacturing.
The total volume of industrial production sold in 2015 amounted to UAH 24.2 billion, which was 39% more than a year earlier (UAH 14.6 billion in 2014).
There are several banks based in Lviv, such as Kredobank, Idea Bank, VS Bank, Oksi Bank and Lviv Bank. None of these banks have bankrupted during the political and economic crisis of 2014–2016, which can be explained by the presence of foreign capital in most of them.
From 2015 to 2019, the city experienced a construction boom. In Q1 2019, according to statistical data, growth in the volume of new housing construction was recorded in Lviv (3.2 times, to 377,900 square meters).
Lviv is a major business center between Warsaw and Kyiv. According to the Lviv Economic Development Strategy, the main branches of the city's economy by 2025 were to be tourism and information technologies (IT), with business services and logistics also considered priorities. In addition, the Nestlé service center is in Lviv. This center guides the company's divisions in 20 countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Also during 2016 the Global Service Center VimpelCom in Lviv was launched, which serves finance, procurement and HR operations in eight foreign branches of this company.
There are many restaurants and shops as well as street vendors of food, books, clothes, traditional cultural items and tourist gifts. Banking and money trading are an important part of the economy of Lviv with many banks and exchange offices throughout the city. The city is also a home for big food-related companies like Lvivske beer factory, Svitoch cholocate factory, Enzym Group, Lviv Liquor and Vodka factory, etc.
In 2009, KPMG, one of the well-known international auditing companies, included Lviv as one of the top 30 cities with the greatest potential of information technology development. As of December 2015, there were 192 IT companies operating in the city, of which 4 were large (with more than 400 employees), 16 were average (150–300 employees), 97 were small (10–110 employees) and 70 were micro companies (3–7 employees). From 2017 to 2018 the number of IT companies increased to 317.
The turnover of Lviv's IT industry in 2015 amounted to $300 million. About 50% of IT services are exported to the US, 37% to Europe, and the rest to other countries. As of 2015, about 15 thousand specialists were employed in this industry with an average salary of 28 thousand UAH. According to a study of the Economic Effect of the Lviv IT-Market, which was conducted by Lviv IT Cluster and sociological agency "The Farm", there were 257 IT companies operating in Lviv in 2017 which employed about 17 thousand specialists. The economic impact of the IT industry in Lviv is $734 million.
There are 15 top universities in Lviv, 5 of which prepare highly skilled specialists in computer and IT technologies and supply over 1,000 IT graduates to the market annually.
Lviv IT outsourcing companies gathered all kinds of Ukrainian developers in one place, resulting in many front-end interns, JavaScript developers, back-end and full-stack coders with proper qualifications, experience, and good English language skills. Some IT companies in Lviv offer outsourcing software services to international corporations rather than developing their software product.
Lviv's historic centre has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1998. UNESCO gave the following reasons L'viv – the Ensemble of the Historic Centre , UNESCO – World Heritage. URL Accessed: 30 October 2006 for its selection:
The World Heritage Site consists of Seredmistia (Middletown), Pidzamche, High Castle, and the ensemble of St. George's Cathedral.
The buildings have many stone sculptures and carvings, particularly on large doors, which are 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 where the Polish elite was buried for centuries. Leaving the central area the architectural style changes radically as Soviet-era high-rise blocks dominate. In the centre of the city, the Soviet era is reflected mainly in a few modern-style national monuments and sculptures.
During the interwar period there were monuments commemorating important figures of Polish history. Some of them were moved to the Polish "Recovered Territories" after World War II, like the Monument to Aleksander Fredro, which now is in Wrocław, the Monument of King John III Sobieski, which after 1945 was moved to Gdańsk, and the monument of Kornel Ujejski, which is now in Szczecin. A book market takes place around the monument to Ivan Fеdorovych, a typographer in the 16th century who fled Moscow and found a new home in Lviv.
New ideas came to Lviv during Austro–Hungarian rule. In the 19th century, many publishing houses, newspapers and magazines were established. Among these was the Ossolineum which was one of the most important Polish scientific libraries. Most Polish-language books and publications of the Ossolineum library are still kept in a local Jesuit church. In 1997 the Polish government asked the Ukrainian government to return these documents to Poland. In 2003, Ukraine allowed access to these publications for the first time. In 2006, an office of the Ossolineum (now in Wrocław) opened in Lviv and began scanning all its documents. Works written in Lviv contributed to Austrian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Polish literature, with a multitude of translations.
The Stepan Bandera monument in Lviv, which stands in front of the Stele of Ukraine Monument, is a statue dedicated to nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, a controversial twentieth century Ukrainian symbol of nationalism who participated in the massacre of thousands of Poles and Jews.
In June 2001, Pope John Paul II visited the Latin Cathedral, St. George's Cathedral and the Armenian Cathedral.
Under the Soviet Union, synagogues remained closed and were used as warehouses or cinemas. The last functioning synagogue was closed in the 1960s. Only since the fall of the Iron Curtain, has the remainder of the Jewish community experienced a faint revival.
Currently, the only functioning Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Lviv is the Beis Aharon V'Yisrael Synagogue.
The "Group Artes" was a young movement founded in 1929. Many of the artists studied in Paris and travelled throughout Europe. They worked and experimented in different areas of modern art: Futurism, Cubism, New Objectivity and Surrealism. Co–operation took place between avant-garde musicians and authors. Altogether thirteen exhibitions by " Artes" took place in Warsaw, Kraków, Łódz and Lviv. The German occupation put an end to this group. Otto Hahn was executed in 1942 in Lviv and Aleksander Riemer was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.Kosmolinska, Natalia (2007). " Ein Fenster zur Moderne: Das Atelier der Sielskis ." In: Hermann Simon, Irene Stratenwerth, & Ronald Hinrichs (Eds.), Lemberg: Eine Reise nach Europa Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. pp. 218–227; here: p. 224.
Henryk Streng and Margit Reich-Sielska were able to escape the The Holocaust (or Shoah). Most of the surviving members of Artes lived in Poland after 1945. Only Margit Reich-Sielska (1900–1980) and Roman Sielski (1903–1990) stayed in Soviet Lviv. For years the city was one of the most important cultural centres of Poland with such writers as Aleksander Fredro, Gabriela Zapolska, Leopold Staff, Maria Konopnicka and Jan Kasprowicz living in Lviv.
Today Lviv is a city of fresh ideas and unusual characters. There are about 20 galleries (Lviv Municipal Art Center, The "Dzyga" Gallery, Art-Gallery "Primus", Gallery of the History of Ukrainian Military Uniforms, Gallery of Modern Art "Zelena Kanapa" and others). Lviv National Art Gallery is the largest museum of arts in Ukraine, with approximately 50,000 artworks, including paintings, sculptures and works of graphic art from Western and Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the modern days.
In the Janowska concentration camp, the Nazis conducted torture and executions to music. To do so they brought almost the whole Lviv National Opera to the camp. Professor Shtriks, opera conductor Mund and other famous Jewish musicians were among the members. From 1941 to 1944 the Nazis massacred 200,000 people including all 40 musicians.
Nowadays Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet has a large creative group of performers who strive to maintain traditions of Ukrainian opera and classical ballet. The Theatre is a well-organized creative body where over 500 people work towards a common goal. The repertoire includes 10 Ukrainian music compositions. No other similar theatre in Ukraine has such a large number of Ukraine productions. There are also many operas written by foreign composers, and most of these operas are performed in the original language: Othello, Aida, La Traviata, Nabucco, and A Masked Ball by G. Verdi, Tosca, La Bohème and Madame Butterfly by G. Puccini, Cavalleria Rusticana by P. Mascagni, and Pagliacci by R. Leoncavallo (in Italian); Carmen by G. Bizet (in French), The Haunted Manor by S. Moniuszko (in Polish)
The most notable of the museums are Lviv National Museum which houses the National Gallery. Its collection includes more than 140,000 unique items. The museum takes special pride in presenting the largest and most complete collection of medieval sacral art of the 12th to 18th centuries: icons, manuscripts, rare ancient books, decoratively carved pieces of art, metal and plastic artworks, and fabrics embroidered with gold and silver. The museum also boasts a unique monument of Ukrainian Baroque style: the Bohorodchansky Iconostasis. Exhibits include Ancient Ukrainian art from the 12th to 15th centuries, Ukrainian art from the 16th to 18th centuries, and Ukrainian art from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century.
The Museum of Ethnography and Crafts includes the Judaica collection of Maksymilian Goldstein.
The Museum of Salo opened in 2011.
Flute virtuoso and composer Franz Doppler (1821–1883) was born and spent his formative years here, including flute lessons from his father. The classical pianist Mieczysław Horszowski (1892–1993) was born here. The opera diva Salomea Kruszelnicka called Lviv her home from the 1920s to 1930s. The classical violinist Adam Han Gorski was born here in 1940. " Polish Radio Lwów" was a Polskie 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 Lwów Wave a cabaret-revue with musical pieces. Jewish artists contributed a great part to this artistic activity. Composers such as Henryk Wars, songwriters Emanuel Szlechter and Wiktor Budzyński, the actor Mieczysław Monderer and Adolf Fleischer (" Aprikosenkranz und Untenbaum") worked in Lviv. The most notable stars of the shows were Henryk Vogelfänger and Kazimierz Wajda who appeared together as the comic duo "Szczepko and Tońko" and were similar to Laurel and Hardy.
The Lviv Philharmonic is a major cultural centre with a long history and traditions that complement Ukraine's entire culture. From the stage of Lviv Philharmonic began their way to the great art world-famous Ukrainian musicians Oleh Krysa, Oleksandr Slobodyanik, Yuriy Lysychenko, and Maria Chaikovska, as well as the younger musicians E. Chupryk, Y. Ermin, Oksana Rapita, and Olexandr Kozarenko. Lviv Philharmonic is one of Ukraine's leading concert institutions. Its activities include international festivals, cycles of concerts-monographs, and concerts with young musicians.
The Chamber Orchestra "Lviv virtuosos" was organised by the best Lviv musicians in 1994. The orchestra consists of 16–40 persons / it depends on programmes/ and in the repertoire are included the musical compositions from Bach, Corelli to modern Ukrainian and European composers. During the short time of its operation, the orchestra acquired the professional level of the best European standards. It is mentioned in more than 100 positive articles by Ukrainian and foreign musical critics.
Lviv is the hometown of the Vocal formation "Pikkardiyska Tertsiya" and Eurovision Song Contest 2004 winner Ruslana who has since become well known in Europe and the rest of the world. PikkardiyskaTertsia was created on 24 September 1992 in Lviv and has won many musical awards. It all began with a quartet performing ancient Ukrainian music from the 15th century, along with adaptations of traditional Ukrainian folk songs.
Lviv Organ Hall is a place where classical music (organ, symphonic, cameral) and art meet together. 50,000 visitors each year, dozens of musicians from all over the world. Lviv is also the hometown of one of the most successful and popular Ukrainian rock bands, Okean Elzy.
In 1852 in Dublany, ( from the outskirts of Lviv) the Agricultural Academy was opened and was one of the first Polish agricultural colleges. The academy was merged with the Lviv Polytechnic in 1919. Another important college of the interbellum period was the Academy of Foreign Trade in Lwów.
In 1873, Lviv has founded Shevchenko Scientific Society from the beginning it attracted the financial and intellectual support of writers and patrons of Ukrainian background.
In 1893 due to the change in its statute, the Shevchenko Scientific Society was transformed into a real scholarly multidisciplinary academy of sciences. Under the presidency of the historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, it greatly expanded its activities, contributing to both the humanities and the physical sciences, law and medicine, but most specifically once again it was concentrated on Ukrainian studies. The Soviet Union annexed the eastern half of the Second Polish Republic including the city of Lwów which capitulated to the Red Army on 22 September 1939. Upon their occupation of Lviv, the Soviets dissolved the Shevchenko society. Many of its members were arrested and either imprisoned or executed.
The local administration regularly organizes readings and events in honor of Nazi collaborators in World War II, participants in the Holocaust, such as Roman Shukhevych and the Nachtigall Battalion:
The Lviv oblast television company transmits on channel 12. There are three private television channels operating from Lviv: "LUKS", "NTA" and "ZIK".
There are 17 regional and all-Ukrainian radio stations operating in the city.
A number of information agencies exist in the city such as "ZIK", "Zaxid.net", "Гал-info", "Львівський портал" and others.
Lviv is home to one of the oldest Polish-language newspapers Gazeta Lwowska which was first published in 1811 and still exists in a bi-weekly form. Among other publications were such titles as
Starting in the 20th century a new movement started with authors from Central Europe. In Lviv a small Neo-romanticism group of authors formed around the lyricist Schmuel Jankev Imber. Small print offices produced collections of modern poems and short story and through emigration a large networkwas established. A second smaller group in the 1930s tried to create a connection between Avant-garde art and Yiddish culture. Members of this group were Debora Vogel, Rachel Auerbach and Rachel Korn. The Holocaust destroyed this movement with Debora Vogel amongst many other Yiddish authors murdered by the Germans in the 1940s.
The first Polish professional football club, Czarni Lwów opened here in 1903 and the first stadium, which belonged to Pogoń, in 1913. Another club, Pogoń Lwów, was four times football champion of Poland (1922, 1923, 1925 and 1926). In the late 1920s, as many as four teams from the city played in the Polish Football League (Pogoń, Czarni, Hasmonea and Lechia). Hasmonea was the first Jewish football club in Poland. Several notable figures of Polish football came from the city including Kazimierz Górski, Ryszard Koncewicz, Michał Matyas and Wacław Kuchar.
In the period 1900–1911 opened the most famous football clubs in Lviv. Professor Ivan Bobersky has based in the Academic grammar school the first Ukrainian sports circle where schoolboys were engaged in track and field, football, boxing, hockey, skiing, tourism and sledge sports in 1906. He organised the "Ukrainian Sports circle" in 1908. Much its pupils in due course in 1911 formed a sports society with the loud name "Ukraine" – the first Ukrainian football club in Lviv. "Ivan Bobersky – training of the first teachers of physical training is connected to his name." .
Lviv now has several major professional football clubs and some smaller clubs. Two teams from the city, FC Rukh Lviv and FC Lviv, currently play in the Ukrainian Premier League, the top level of football in the country. FC Karpaty Lviv, founded in 1963, has historically been the largest club in the city. At the end of the 2019–20 Ukrainian Premier League season, Karpaty was expelled from the league for failing to appear to two games. Karpaty Lviv are officially excluded from the UPL (Львовские "Карпаты" официально исключены из УПЛ) . ZIK. 9 July 2020 They currently play in the Ukrainian Second League, the third level of Ukrainian football.
Lviv Speedway is a motorcycle speedway team based at the SKA Stadium.
Lviv made a bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, which was withdrawn in June 2014.
The most popular tourist attractions include the Old Town, and the Market Square () which is an square in the city centre where the City Hall is situated, as well as the Black House (), Armenian Cathedral, the complex of the Dormition Church which is the main Orthodox church in the city; the St. Peter and Paul Church of the Jesuit Order (one of the largest churches in Lviv); along with the Korniakt Palace, now part of the Lviv History Museum.
Other prominent sites include the Latin Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary; St. George's Cathedral of the Greek-Catholic Church; the Dominican Church of Corpus Christi; Chapel of the Boim family; the Lviv High Castle () on a hill overlooking the centre of the city; the Union of Lublin Mound; the Lychakivskiy Cemetery where the notable people were buried; and the Svobody Prospekt which is Lviv's central street. Other popular places include Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, the Potocki Palace, and the Bernardine Church.
Lviv has established many city feasts, such as coffee and chocolate feasts, cheese & wine holiday, the feast of pampukh, the Day of Batyar, Annual Bread Day and others. Over 50 festivals happen in Lviv, such as Leopolis Jazz Fest, an international jazz festival; the Leopolis Grand Prix, an international festival of vintage cars; international festival of academic music Virtuosi; Stare Misto Rock Fest; medieval festival Lviv Legend; international Etnovyr folklore festival, initiated by UNESCO; international festival of visual art Wiz-Art; international theatrical festival Golden Lion; Lviv Lumines Fluorescent Art Festival; Festival of Contemporary Dramaturgy; international contemporary music festival Contrasts; Lviv international literary festival, Krayina Mriy; gastronomic festival Lviv on a Plate; organ music festival Diapason; international independent film festival KinoLev; international festival LvivKlezFest; and international media festival MediaDepo.
Lviv honors the memory of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. The Lviv regional council approved an appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on March 16, 2021, requesting that the largest stadium here be renamed after these two men. Bandera led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought alongside Nazi Germany during WWII, killing thousands of Jews and Poles. In 1940, Shukhevych commanded a military unit of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that actively collaborated with the Nazis.
The Lviv tramway system now runs about 220 cars on of track. Many tracks were reconstructed around 2006. The price in February 2019 of a tram/trolleybus ticket was 5 UAH (the reduced fare ticket was 2.5 UAH, e.g. for students). The ticket may be purchased from the driver.
After World War II the city grew rapidly due to evacuees returning from Russia, and the Soviet Government's vigorous development of heavy industry. This included the transfer of entire factories from the Urals and others to the newly "liberated" territories of the USSR. The city centre tramway lines were replaced with Lviv trolleybus on 27 November 1952. New lines were opened to the Tower block at the city outskirts.
The network now runs about 100 trolleybuses – mostly of the 1980s Skoda 14Tr and LAZ 52522. From 2006 to 2008 11 modern Low floor trolleybuses (LAZ E183) built by the Lviv Bus Factory were purchased. The public bus network is represented by mini-buses (so-called marshrutka) and large buses mainly LAZ and MAN. On 1 January 2013, the city had 52 public bus routes.
In the inter-war period, Lviv (known then as Lwów) was one of the most important hubs of the Polish State Railways. The Lwów junction consisted of four stations in mid-1939 – main station Lwów Główny (now ), Lwów Kleparów (now Lviv Klepariv), Lwów Łyczaków (now Lviv Lychakiv), and Lwów Podzamcze (now Lviv Pidzamche). In August 1939 just before World War II, 73 trains departed daily from the Main Station including 56 local and 17 fast trains. Lwów was directly connected with all major centres of the Second Polish Republic as well as such cities as Berlin, Bucharest, and Budapest.Urzędowy Rozkład Jazdy i Lotów PKP, Lato 1939 (Polish State Railroads Timetable, Summer 1939)
Currently, several trains cross the nearby Polish–Ukrainian border (mostly via Przemyśl in Poland). There are good connections to Slovakia (Košice) and Hungary (Budapest). Many routes have overnight trains with sleeping compartments. Lviv railway is often called the main gateway from Ukraine to Europe although buses are often a cheaper and more convenient way of entering the "Schengen Area" countries.
Lviv used to have a Railbus, which has since been replaced with other means of public transport. It was a motor-rail car that ran from the largest district of Lviv to one of the largest industrial zones going through the central railway station. It made seven trips a day and was meant to provide a faster and more comfortable connection between the remote urban districts. The price in February 2010 of a one-way single ride in the railbus was 1.50 UAH. On 15 June 2010, the route was cancelled as unprofitable.
In 1913–1914 brothers Tadeusz and Władysław Floriańscy built a two-seater aeroplane. When World War I broke out Austrian authorities confiscated it but did not manage to evacuate the plane in time and it was seized by the Russians who used the plane for intelligence purposes. The Floriański brothers' plane was the first Polish-made aircraft. On 5 November 1918, a crew consisting of Stefan Bastyr and Janusz de Beaurain carried out the first-ever flight under the Polish flag taking off from Lviv's Lewandówka (now ) airport. In the interbellum period Lwów was a major centre of gliding with a notable Gliding School in Bezmiechowa which opened in 1932. In the same year the Institute of Gliding Technology was opened in Lwów and was the second such institute in the world. In 1938 the First Polish Aircraft Exhibition took place in the city.
The interwar Lwów was also a major centre of the Polish Air Force with the Sixth Air Regiment located there. The Regiment was based at the Lwów airport opened in 1924 in the suburb of Skniłów (today ). The airport is located from the city centre. In 2012, after renovation, Lviv Airport got a new official name Lviv Danylo Halytskyi International Airport (LWO). A new terminal and other improvements worth under a $200 million was done in preparation for the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. Modernization of Lviv airport for Euro-2012 finals to cost $200 million. The government can cough up $70 million , Z I K (27 May 2008) The connection from Airport to the city centre is maintained by bus No. 48 and No. 9.
By September 2011, of new cycling infrastructure had been built. It can be expected that until the end of 2011 will be ready for use. The cycling advisor in Lviv – the first such position in Ukraine – is supervising and pushing forward the execution of the cycling plan and coordinates with various people in the city. The development of cycling in Ukraine is currently hampered by outdated planning norms and the fact, that most planners didn't yet plan and experience cycling infrastructure. The update of national legislation and training for planners is therefore necessary.
In 2015, the first stations have been set up for a new bike-sharing system Nextbike – the first of its kind in Ukraine. New bike lanes are also under construction, making Lviv the most bike-friendly city in the country. The Lviv City Council plans to build an entire cycling infrastructure by 2020, with cycle lanes () and street bike hire services.
In Soviet Union times, the city of Lviv was the location where the software for the Lunokhod programme was developed. The technology for the Venera series probes and the first orbital shuttle Buran were also developed in Lviv.
A considerable scientific potential is concentrated in the city: by the number of doctors of sciences, candidates of sciences, scientific organisations Lviv is the fourth city in Ukraine. Lviv is also known for ancient academic traditions, founded by the Assumption Brotherhood School and the Jesuit Collegium. Over 100,000 students annually study in more than 50 higher educational establishments.
Educational level of residents:
| Winnipeg | 1973 | |
| Corning | 1987 | |
| Freiburg im Breisgau | 1989 | |
| Rzeszów | 1992 | |
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| Łódź N.B. Lviv appears on this reference under its Polish language name 'Lwów' | 2003 | |
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