Lviv Interactive

Lviv Interactive is a web-accessible, interactive historical map of the city of Lviv. The map aims at presenting the contemporary, living city in its historical dimension rather than reproducing a static picture of the past.

Feature Items

Old Jewish Kirkut (cemetery)

The old Jewish cemetery was first mentioned in the municipal records on May 27, 1414. By the seventeenth century, following the acquisition of surrounding private land plots during the previous centuries, the cemetery covered the territory between today's Rappoporta, Bazarna, Brovarna and Kleparivska Streets. For many years the old cemetery was shared by the two Jewish communities of the city. The cemetery was officially closed on August 22, 1855. The old Jewish cemetery, which no longer exists today, was one of the oldest and most renowned Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Old gravestones were eventually used for paving streets and constructing walls of the “New” Market, also known as Krakivskyi (Cracow) Market. Gravestone plates from the old Jewish cemetery were also used to pave the courtyard of the prison in former Lonskiego St.

Doroshenka Street

Petra Doroshenka Street lies between Svobody Boulevard and Bandery Street. Its previous names were: Sykstuska (or Sixtuska Gasse up to 1938), Obrony Lwowa (1938-1940), Sykstusstrasse (1941-1944), and Zhovtneva (1940, 1944-1992). This street arose in place of a road that once led from the medieval city walls to the estate of Erasm Sikst/Erazm Sykst, mayor of Lviv in the early seventeenth century and famous medical doctor. In the early twentieth century, the Historicist rental houses were partly replaced by Jugendstil buildings, and later Constructivist ones. 1894 saw an electric tram line being laid in the lower part of the street, leading from the Central Train Station to the Hetmanski Bulwarks, where it forked, leading to the Galician County Fair in Sofijówka, and through the Rynok Square to Lychakiv/Łyczaków. In November 1918 bitter fighting went on for the building of the Main Post Office between Ukrainian and Polish troops.

Virgin Mary Statue in former Mariacka Square

In 1862, the marble statue of Virgin Mary (sculpted in 1859 by the Munich sculptor Johann Nepomuk Hautmann), was installed in place of a well which had previously stood here. The statue was a gift to the city from Countess Seweryna Badeni, wife of Kazimierz Badeni, the governor of Galicia. The Virgin Mary statue initially stood in the center of Mariacka Square. In 1904 it was moved off the center of the square, in order to free space for a monument to poet Adam Mickiewicz.

Former Golden Rose Synagogue (Taz, Turey Zahav)

The synagogue was constructed in Renaissance style in 1582-1595 from brick and stone by architect Paweł Szczęśliwy (Pavlo Shchaslyvyi) and funded by the wealthy Nachmanowicz family. The synagogue would have been one of the oldest within the current borders of Ukraine. Yet in August 1941, all its religious objects were plundered and in 1943 it was demolished by explosives by the Nazis. The ruins that remain today, long neglected but undergoing some preservation efforts recently, are a symbol of the tragedy of Lviv’s Jews.

Metrolohichna 3

This four-story apartment building (1911-1912; Ivan Levynsky architectural bureau) forms an ensemble with the neighboring house no. 67 on Kotliarevskogo Street. In apartment sections, internal planning is organized according to the two-tract principle. This is an example of the early twentieth-century Neoclassicism.

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Are you or have you lived in Lviv? Do you have additional information or specific memories on the below buildings, monuments and streets? Please send your comment to lia@lvivcenter.org