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I’m standing in Rynok (‘Old Market’) Square, soaking up the warm morning sun as I get my bearings. A gaggle of beautifully dressed young women in high heels and long gowns are elegantly clip-clopping across the cobbles – on their way to a wedding, perhaps. A street cleaner parks his cart nearby and begins to brush a little dirt about although, to be honest, the square already looks spotless to me. I glance up at the skyline where a jumble of building styles compete for my attention: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical. Is this some sort of architectural theme park? No – although it was given UNESCO World Heritage status in 1998, this is a real-life, working city: in the streets just beyond the square, trolleybuses rattle by, crowded with workers from the suburbs. So, where am I? Prague? Poland? Krakow, perhaps? No, again. This is Lviv in western Ukraine.

Lviv may not be the ‘new Prague’ but if Krakow has recently surfaced to fill that role, then perhaps Lviv is destined to become ‘the new Krakow’. The comparison is not entirely frivolous: Lviv stood in for Krakow in the filming of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and the city has served as a setting for the book and film Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is, undoubtedly, an illuminating sort of place. Other famous sons include Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs, of whom the term ‘masochism’ was first coined. Lviv may currently be overlooked in favour of other Eastern European hotspots but, like Sacher-Masoch, it certainly deserves a fair crack of the whip.

Lviv For Sale

The lush architecture of Rynok Square is so grand and intoxicating that it dazes like a drug – I need a caffeine fix to spur me into action. Where better then than Svit Kavy (‘World of Coffee’), just off the square, which has a bewildering selection to choose from and a mixed clientele of trendy young things and smartly dressed businessmen. The café’s terrace faces out onto the façade of the 17th-century Boïm Chapel opposite: lavishly Gothic and as rich as Sacher Torte, it is something to savour while sipping my cappuccino.

Heading back across the square, I notice a couple of gleaming Harley Davison motorbikes parked in front of the history museum. With sleek, polished metal set against an elegant backdrop, it could be a photo-shoot for a magazine advertisement. Clearly, it is not. A pair of bored-looking policemen amble over to admire the bikes, then write out two parking tickets with just the hint of a smile on their lips.

Wandering east of the square, I come across a second-hand book market in the shadow of the Dominican Church’s green dome. The books are set out on stalls clustered around a large statue of a bearded man holding a book – Ivan Fyodorov, a 16th-century Russian printer who came to live in the city. There is all manner of other curios here too: medals, postcards with USSR stamps on them and even portraits of Stalin and Lenin. It is an Aladdin’s Cave of Soviet memorabilia but there are just a handful of browsers; it would seem that the stuff of yesterday’s dreams has become today’s unwanted clutter.

Away from the historic centre, you start to catch more glimpses of Ukraine’s Soviet past, although this is low-key and more evident in the infrastructure than in the fabric of the place. It may be this vague Soviet edginess that helps create the city’s special atmosphere. Lviv may well have ornate architecture and Viennese-style coffee houses but it is the faint whiff of cabbage and slightly grumpy air of resignation that makes it truly unique. But don’t be put off - you can buy opera tickets for a euro or two, the streetcars are cheap and efficient, and cheerfully plump old women still sell enormous jars of homemade pickles at the central market. The old order of things is also apparent at the city’s Railway Booking Office, where queuing is a specialist art that requires the use of elbows and assertive body language. This is where comparisons with Prague start to falter and an inability to speak Ukrainian, or Russian…or Polish, can be quite a handicap. I come a little unstuck here but luckily am rescued by an English-speaking student in the queue.

I return to Rynok Square for dinner at Amadeus, a plush restaurant with an Austrian feel near the Latin Cathedral. It’s a warm night so I pass on the live jazz in the dining room and opt for a seat outside on the terrace. Declining the fancier dishes on offer, I opt for grilled shashlyk, the Ukrainian take on kebab, which is mouth-wateringly delicious. The simpler things are often the best.

Lviv Will Tear Us Apart

Next morning, I enjoy a leisurely breakfast at Tsoukerina, another coffee house just off Rynok Square, before heading for Lviv’s 14th-century Armenian cathedral, one of the city’s oldest places of worship. The cathedral is surprisingly well lit inside, illuminated by brilliant columns of sunlight sloping through the high windows. There is still a small but active Armenian community in the city and a few of them wander in from the street to light a candle and say a prayer while I admire the church’s dazzling interior.  

For all Lviv’s beautiful buildings and gorgeous squares, there is an ominous side to the city too, and the air seems redolent with dark history and upheaval in places. This sense of loss is most tangible in what is left of the Jewish quarter – and for good reason: before World War II, Jews made up around one third of Lviv’s population; by 1943 there were barely a thousand left. Staroyevreiska Street (‘Old Hebrew Street’) has the Golden Rose synagogue and a rather forlorn-looking park (the ‘Square of Weeping’) at its end but apart from a few neglected, boarded-up houses there is little else to see.

In comparison to the dark foreboding of the Jewish quarter, Lviv’s Lychakivsky Cemetery at the city’s eastern edge is more wistful than gloomy. Like all the best cemeteries, it is both beautiful and a little eerie: a Gothic fantasy of crumbling statues and overgrown headstones. The mausoleums range from the humble to the magnificent, with poignant statues of women collapsed over the graves of their husbands, and angels gathered in groups to comfort the deceased. One tomb has a huge sleeping lion draped over it in dormant protection, as gentle as an old Labrador. I have arrived later than I intended and dusk is approaching. As I wander around, shafts of light slope through the trees like searchlights, briefly bathing individual graves in glory as the sun goes down.

All You Need Is Lviv

Tonight, I sample the fare at an Armenian restaurant next door to the church I’d visited earlier. The beer is good – Lviv’s very own Lvivske Premium – but I have difficulty choosing what to eat from an English menu that plays fast and loose with translation and pass the opportunity to try ‘tongue in a bag’.

Walking back to my hotel, I come across a parade of uniformed men carrying enormous blue and yellow national flags. I wonder how the same display would go down in Kiev or Odessa. Here in the far west of the country, it is easy to forget that Ukraine is still quite a raw, divided nation trying to find its place in the post-Soviet scheme of things. This may be the Ukrainian heartland but Lviv has spent the majority of its time under Polish, Austrian and Russian control over the past few centuries. The freedom to be an independent Ukraine in its own right might take some getting used to. All the same, Lviv is an excellent place to start. 

For more information on all of Ukraine visit our destination guide

For Lviv tourist info try www.inlviv.info

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About the writer:

Laurence is a freelance travel writer and photographer who specialises in off-the-beaten-path destinations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He is the author of Bradt guides to Serbia, Belgrade and Kyrgyzstan, a contributor to magazines that include Geograhpical, Real Travel, JetWings and Hidden Europe, and a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers.