Lviv (,; ) is the fifth-largest city in Ukraine, as well as the largest city in the western part of the country, with a population of 723,403 (2025 estimate).ukr.net/news/details/lviv It serves as the administrative center of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centers of Ukraine. The city also hosts the administration of Lviv urban hromada. Lviv was named after Leo I of Galicia, the eldest son of Daniel, King of Ruthenia. During its history the city has had several names.
In the 14th century, Lviv emerged as the heart of the historical regions of Red Ruthenia and Galicia, superseding other historic cities such as 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 semiautonomous Polish-dominated Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Between 1918 and 1939, the city was the heart of the Lwów Voivodeship in the Second Polish Republic. During this period the city's culture and industry flourished, as did its academic institutions, such as the Lwów School of Mathematics, the , and the Lwów School of Economics. After the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Lwów was annexed by the Soviet Union. It survived Soviet and German occupations during World War II largely unscathed. In February 1946, the city became a part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, having lost an estimated 80-90% of its prewar population. In 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lviv stayed part of Ukraine.
The historical heart of the city has cobblestone streets and an assortment of Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicist and Art Nouveau architecture; it is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is listed as an endangered site due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Lviv has a number of industries and institutions of higher education, such as Lviv University and Lviv Polytechnic. The city is also the home of multiple cultural institutions, including the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Lviv Philharmonic and the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet.
Names and symbols The city of Lviv has been known by multiple names. These include, amongst others: () ; ; and ; () ; () ; () ; () and () ; , and .
The coat of arms, and the logo and banner of the Lviv City Council are the officially approved symbols of Lviv. The names or images of architectural and historical monuments are also considered symbols of the city. The city's modern coat of arms is based on that of a mid-14th-century seal. The modern seal depicts 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 colourful 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.
History
Archaeologists have demonstrated that the Lviv area was settled by the fifth century, with the gord at Chernecha Hora-Voznesensk Street in Lychakivskyi District attributed to White Croats. Following the Batu Khan invasion of 1240, King Daniel of Galicia reconstructed the stronghold. A settlement subsequently developed in the form of a borough, distinguished by an elongated market square.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, pp. 20–21.Jan Buraczyński, Roztocze – dzieje osadnictwa, Lublin 2008, p. 73. The city of Lviv was founded in 1250 by Daniel in honour of his son LevOrest Subtelny. (1988) Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p62 as LvihorodGloger, Zygmunt. Voivodeship of Ruthenia. Historic geography of old Polish lands (Województwo Ruskie. Geografia historyczna ziem dawnej Polski) . Library of Polish Literature POWRÓT. which is consistent with names of other Ukrainian cities, such as Myrhorod, Sharhorod, Novhorod, Bilhorod, Horodyshche, and Horodok. Daniel invited German merchants and artisans, primarily from Poland and Silesia, to settle in Lviv during the mid-13th century.
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 Burundai. 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 fortifications of] 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.
In the 13th and 14th centuries the city and region was a destination of 50,000 Armenians fleeing from the Saljuq and Mongol invasions of Armenia.
Galicia–Volhynia Wars During the wars over the succession of Galicia-Volhynia Principality in 1339 King Casimir III of Poland undertook an expedition and captured the city in 1340, burning down the old princely castle. Poland ultimately gained control over Lviv and the adjacent region in 1349. From then on the population was subjected to attempts to both Polonize and Catholicize the population.Jacob Caro: Geschichte Polens. Vol. 2, Gotha 1863, p. 286 (in German, online ) The Lithuanians ravaged Lviv land in 1351 during the Halych-Volhyn Wars with Lviv being plundered and destroyed by duke Liubartas in 1353.
Casimir built a new city centre (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.
Kingdom of Poland
In 1349, the Kingdom of Ruthenia with its capital Lviv was annexed by the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The kingdom was transformed into the Ruthenian domain of the Crown with Lwów as the capital. On 17 June 1356 King Casimir III the Great moved the city to a new location and granted it Magdeburg rights, which implied that all city matters were to be resolved by a council elected by the wealthy citizens. The city's German-speaking Catholic burghers emerged as the dominant urban community and benefited from the support of the Polish monarch. In 1358, the city became a seat of Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which initiated the spread of Latin Church onto the Ruthenian lands. In 1362, the High Castle was built with stone.
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 formed the largest groups of newcomers, followed by Poles and Czechs.Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki. A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 32. In the 15th century, Germans eventually became the majority of the city's population. However, in the 1470s and 1480s, Ottoman expansion in the northern Black Sea region disrupted the trade networks in which the German merchants were active, resulting in a substantial decline in their economic influence. Most of the settlers were polonised by the end of the 15th century, and the city became a Polish island surrounded by the Ruthenian Orthodox population. In 1356, the Armenian diocese was founded centred at the Armenian Cathedral. Lwów was one of two main cultural and religious centres 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, Łuck, Kamieniec, as well as Siret and Kijów (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 cities 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".