Lviv Ecotour- Tours in Western Ukraine

Free Lviv Tours - be your own tour guide

Experience Lviv’s beauty by touring its most popular sights at your own pace. Simply select from a number of short tour guides below, reach your favorite site and read the guide to learn more about its history. Enjoy your tour.

Tour One – the High Castle in Lviv

To get to the High Castle Hill, following the map, walk for about 25 minutes generally north-east from the Town Hall on the Market Square.

The High Castle Hill, 413 m (1355 feet) above sea level, is the best vantage point for a panoramic view of Lviv. The base of the steel flag mast in the center of the viewing area shows the cardinal points to help in orientation. This is one of the highest spots of the low range of hills stretching through Lviv and across the border into Poland. These hills are also part of the main European water divide that splits rivers feeding the Baltic and the Black seas. As a result, Lviv is divided into the Baltic and the Black Sea parts. When weather conditions provide good visibility, the vague outlines of the Carpathian Mountains can be seen from here to the south-west.

Tour Two - Lviv Town Hall and Market Square

It's been a long time since the Market Square in Lviv (Rynok in Ukrainian) stopped being a commercial market. The buildings around the square witnessed busy market days, public gatherings and executions. The earliest of the buildings date back to the 15th century, but most were rebuilt after the big fire of 1527 which destroyed most of the gothic buildings of Lviv. The Town Hall in the center of the Market Square is more recent and was built in the 19th century. Its predecessor did not survive after the old town hall tower collapsed of its own weight in 1826. Some residents of Lviv disliked the new tower and the town hall and called them an "ugly chimney", but the structure is now one of the landmarks of Lviv. The weather-vane lion on the tower, when it fell to the ground, was an omen of bad things to come, as it was in 1672 when the Lion was blown to the ground in a storm, an event that was followed by 7 weeks of Turkish siege.

For a few years now the town hall tower has been open to the public and offers a great vantage point over the old town. As you probably guessed, in the Soviet era, the tower was closed to the public for fear that Western spies might use the view of the city to plot an attack. To get to the tower, go through the main entrance of the Town Hall between the two stone lions and go up the stairs to the ticket desk.

Tour Three – Lviv Churches

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH
The Armenian Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the oldest standing structures in present-day Lviv. A small Armenian church modeled after the Cathedral of Ani in the ancient Armenian capital was built here in the years 1363–1370. It was founded by an Armenian merchant and established as the mother church of the Armenian community on the spot where a quince tree brought from Armenia produced fruit with a cross-shaped pattern inside.

The best point to view the church from the outside is by looking through the iron bars of the fence into the courtyard from Armenian street. Look at the splendid stone belfry to the right, which was erected after the church was damaged in a fire in 1527. And take the passage under the belfry to see the amazing statue of St. Christopher on a high pedestal. Look into the church courtyard at the wall of the adjacent building to see a wooden chapel from the 18th century representing Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified. There was a cemetery around the church and even now you can see that the surrounding courtyard is paved with tombstones. According to the Armenian tradition, the sins of the dead are forgiven as their written names on tombstones wear out.

Read more: Tour Three – Lviv Churches

Tour Four - Svobody Avenue in Lviv

We'll start our walk along Svobody Avenue near the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. When you look south of the fountain, your eye catches the monument to the great Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. Come up for a closer look to see the sculptural composition called Inspiration – an angel handing a lyra to the great poet. Further away and to the right stands the famous Hotel George, named after its original owner George Hoffman. At the top of the George Hotel, over its main entrance, you can see St.George the Dragon Fighter on a horse. Now let's go back to the Virgin Mary fountain and look to the left where the first Lviv skyscraper from the early 20th century dominates the view. Most of its offices were occupied by oil companies when Lviv was an important center for the Carpathian oil fields, which accounted for about five percent of the world's oil output at the beginning of the 20th century.

Tour Five – Old Lviv Jewish Section

Let's take a walk around the oldest Jewish quarter, where Jews lived since Lviv was founded. We will start from the corner of Ruska and Fedorova Streets. Look at the heavy buttresses of the corner building to your right. Here was the gate to the Jewish part of town. Every night the gate was locked from within for the safety of its residents. Building #20 to your right underwent several modifications but still preserves some of its old elements that were typical of a Jewish house in Lviv – on the first floor you can distinguish a store, now a cafe, and the entrance to the storage space in the basement. This building was named after the Korkes family who owned it until the early 20th century. Keep walking down the street to Building #27 on your left. Approaching the entrance door, look on the right side of the doorway for an indentation in the wall where a mezuzah was kept. Look up to the third floor high above the street level for an old square plaque in memory of David Galevi, an outstanding Talmudist who worshipped at the Golden Rose Synagogue. Its ruins can be reached from the courtyard of Building #27. It was named the Golden Rose after the synagogue founder's daughter who helped to defend the temple from the Jesuits claiming ownership of the land under the Jewish temple.

Tour Six - Lychakiv Cemetery

Lychakiv Cemetery was opened in 1786 following an imperial Austro-Hungarian edict ordering that all cemeteries be moved outside of the city limits, and served the central, wealthier part of Lviv, a fact that contributed to its unusual splendor. Standing at the neo-gothic entrance gate, look inside to see a wide open square with a number of chapels at the perimeter. These are the burial chapels of the Lviv rich from before the Second World War. The chapel on the right with a round dome belongs to the Baczewski family who owned a Lviv distillery that produced over 300 types of liquor. In pre-war Lviv, the name Baczewski became a generic word for any alcohol. To the left is the chapel of the Adamskis, who were important pharmacists. Franciszek Adamski was in the Napoleon army. Look further left at the smaller of the two brick chapels which belongs to the owner of the Lviv brewery Karol Kiselka. He started as a factory worker and later became the chairman of the Lviv Chamber of Commerce. His brewery still functions today and makes the famous Lvivske beer. The bigger brick chapel to the left belonged to the Kszegunowicz family of land owners and politicians. Walk a few hundred steps up the alleys behind the Adamski chapel in this oldest part of the cemetery to discover some great examples of sculpture in the style of classicism.

Read more: Tour Six - Lychakiv Cemetery

Tour Seven – Lviv Folk Architecture and Rural Life Museum

Right from the museum gate, if you look straight ahead to where the paved path curves to the right, to the left of this path you can see one of the museum's oldest exhibits – the wooden thatched house from the village of Oriavchyk in the Carpathian Mountains built in 1792. The house comes from the area in the mountains to the south-west of Lviv, inhabited by the Ukrainian ethnicity called Boyko. Wood was the most common construction material in the Carpathians, being widely available and providing good heat insulation. The covered gallery in front of the house gives access to the living area and the store room and serves as protection from the rain during different types of manual work. The high walls of the house, made from thick spruce logs connecting at the corners in simple locks, lean inside at a slight angle. Look at the carving at the top of the entrance door. Such designs resembling bull's horns are typical Boyko patterns. For the purpose of heat conservation, the living space is between the hallway and the storeroom. The two small nine-pane windows slide to open. Having nine panes in a small window is a way to better preserve expensive in those days glass. A large stove with built-in benches at its sides takes up much space inside the living area but the house lacks a chimney. Most of the 18th century dwellings in the Carpathian Mountains had stoves designed to let out smoke inside the house. Smoke filled out the upper space of the room, slightly above the head level, and went outside through a special opening in the ceiling. It took some skills to start a fire keeping the amount of smoke to the minimum. Chimneyless houses had very plain interiors – icons and decorations could not survive the smoke and were displayed only for special occasions. Further in the corner is a bed with a cradle over it. The top of a chest is used as a table. To the left of the door is a dish rack. Look at the four beams below the ceiling. They are for drying and food preservation. Some researchers say that such beams date back thousands of years to the times when cave people used them to keep food safe from domesticated dogs.