Walk through Lviv

Walk through Lviv is an opportunity to share a few more pictures from that beautiful city. I will also talk about the place where we stayed, at the end of the post. I shared a few posts on museums and places I’ve been to, so there is no need to make a round-up of those.

This is Lviv National Opera. It is in the centre and they are still staging shows. I would have loved to attend one, but as we were backpacking, that was not an option. In front of the opera people are gathering around in the evenings and they sign along with the street artists. It was such a wonderful atmosphere. I loved it.

The building opened in 1900 and it has a lovely story. A teacher from Lviv Polytechnic University, Mr. Mars, made a bet that the sculpture of Freedom on top of Opera was of a woman 4 months pregnant. He was a gynaecologist. He found the author of the sculpture and asked about the model. He was right, the model was pregnant when she posed.

Another interesting thing is that in April 1990, before the fall of the soviet union, the first performance of the Ukraine’s national anthem was sang there.

Taras Shevchenko Monument – 19th century Ukrainian nationalist and poet.

We took a train ride with a guide and it was very interesting. It was about 50 minutes or one hour long and the guide is in different languages, including English. The tour is fascinating because of what is included in it. For example, it was mentioned that a street was renamed to Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen leader who tried to break free Chechnya from russia, while previously its name was of a russian poet who showed his racism towards Chechens. Dudayev wanted Chechens to be able to write with the Latin alphabet in 1993, just before russia attacked Chechenya and the first Chechen War started.
Dudayev said:’I declare if the world community does not stop russia, this is the future destiny for all the people. Blood was spilled in Ingushetia [Chechenya], Ossetia [Georgia], Azerbaijan, Karabakh, Tajikistan and the geography of killing will be more and more widespread.’ As we see today, he was right. The second Chechen war started, then Ukraine [2014], and Syria, Africa, and again Ukraine in 2022.

Dudayev also said: ‘russia will die when the Ukrainian sun rises’.

The fire station in Lviv looks lovely and it has an impressive history. The fire service for the city dates back to 1849. The building is newer, only 123 years old, opened in June 1901.

The Lviv-Holovnyi railway station was finished in 1904. The architect, Pole Władysław Sadłowski, was a member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It looks beautiful.

There are so many churches in Ukraine and most are visited by many people on weekdays and they are packed on Sundays. The one in the picture above is the Armenian Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary, with a history dating back to the 14th century. During the soviet times the Armenians were expelled to Poland. They returned after the fall of the soviet union. Now the church is used by two Armenian communities.

St. Geroge Church

This is the Church of St. Olha and Elizabeth and it is a Greek Catholic Church.

Bernardine monastery, at night

There are vendors doing cotton candy in front of the Opera and I had to get one. There are also people playing chess.

This is a children’s playground, in a park.

The war might be raging, but, as you can see, there is no reason for not having clean streets, and freshly painted benches.

This display is near the car park of the Forum, a mall in Lviv. The attention to detail is lovely, there are display boards with details and a few artefacts.

In Ukraine people are very found of Apple. This is an Apple Museum, free to visit, inside a shopping centre. We were there to buy Ukrainian SIM cards and took the opportunity to look around.

These are our apartments from Lviv. On top left and centre are from the first apartment we stayed in, which had those lovely views that are in the bottom left and right. On top right is the second apartment we stayed in. It was the same aparthotel, but we were given another room when we turned back from Kyiv. In the bottom middle is where we had our breakfast each day.