Lviv: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Lviv was founded in the thirteenth century and has belonged to Poland, Austria, the Soviet Union and Ukraine, and its old town, a world heritage site, has Polish, Armenian, Jewish, German and Ukrainian layers in a few streets. Since 2022 Ukraine has been at war; Lviv has been a city of refuge and has been struck by missiles, and air-raid sirens sound. Check your government’s travel advice before going. Ninety minutes, flat.
A short history of Lviv
The city was founded in the mid-13th century by Prince Daniel of Galicia, who named it after his son Lev. In 1349 it came under Polish rule, and for centuries Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Armenians lived there side by side. In 1772 it passed to Austria, was called Lemberg and became the capital of Galicia. On the eve of the Second World War more than 100,000 Jews lived there, about a third of the population, and almost all of them were murdered in the Holocaust, many in the Janowska camp on the edge of the city. After the war it was annexed to Soviet Ukraine and the Poles left. Since 1991 it has been part of independent Ukraine, and its historic centre was declared a World Heritage Site in 1998.
The ten best sights in Lviv
1Rynok SquareThe market square of forty-four old houses
2City HallClimb the tower for the domes and roofs
3Pharmacy MuseumA pharmacy working since 1735
4Armenian CathedralA church of 1363 in a quiet courtyard
5Dominican ChurchA baroque dome on the museum square
6Boim ChapelA black carved façade beside the Latin cathedral
7Jesuit ChurchFrescoed walls, a garrison church today
8Golden Rose SynagogueThe ruins of a synagogue of 1582 and a memorial
9Staroyevreiska StreetThe old Jewish street of the walled town
10Bernardine MonasteryA fortified monastery by the old walls
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Lviv →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Lviv:
Free walking tours in Lviv
The market square and the cathedrals
Lviv was founded in the thirteenth century and has belonged to Poland, Austria, the Soviet Union and Ukraine, and its old town, a world heritage site, has Polish, Armenian, Jewish, German and Ukrainian layers in a few streets. Since 2022 Ukraine has been at war; Lviv has been a city of refuge and has been struck by missiles, and air-raid sirens sound. Check your government’s travel advice before going. Ninety minutes, flat.
- Rynok Square · The market square laid out in the fourteenth century under Polish rule, lined with forty-four houses of rich merchants, each with its own story — a Venetian lion on one, the Black House of dark sandstone on another. Each corner has a fountain of a Greek god.
- City Hall · The old town hall’s tower collapsed in 1826, and the Austrians rebuilt it in plain classical style; its tower, about sixty-five metres high, can be climbed by about four hundred steps for the green domes and red roofs of the whole old town.
- Pharmacy Museum · The pharmacy Under the Black Eagle opened here in 1735 and still sells medicines over its old wooden counter, while its back rooms are a museum of jars, scales and alchemy. It sells a famous iron-rich wine as a tonic.
- Armenian Cathedral · Armenian merchants settled in Lviv in the Middle Ages, and in 1363 they built this cathedral in the style of their homeland, in a quiet courtyard of tombstones. In the 1920s its walls were painted with dreamlike frescoes by the Polish artist Jan Henryk Rosen.
- Boim Chapel · A family chapel of 1615, built by a Hungarian merchant family, whose façade is covered entirely in dark carved stone — the Passion of Christ, saints and the family’s portraits. It stands beside the Latin cathedral, the Catholic cathedral of the city since the fourteenth century.
- Opera House · The grand opera house of 1900 stands at the head of Svobody Avenue, which was built over the Poltva river, covered over in the nineteenth century. The river still runs in a tunnel under the boulevard and the opera.
The Jewish town
Before the Second World War about a third of Lviv’s people — more than a hundred thousand — were Jews, one of the great Jewish communities of Europe. Almost all were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1941 and 1943, in the ghetto, in the Janowska camp at the city’s edge and in Bełżec. This walk passes what remains. An hour and a half.
- Staroyevreiska Street · The Old Jewish Street ran through the Jewish quarter inside the walls, where Jews were allowed to live from the fourteenth century. The street kept its name through all the regimes, though almost nothing Jewish remains on it.
- Golden Rose Synagogue · Built in 1582 by the merchant Isaac Nachmanovich, the Golden Rose was one of the finest synagogues in Europe; legend says it was saved from the Jesuits by his daughter-in-law Rosa, and it was named for her. The Nazis blew it up in 1942. Only some walls remain, beside a memorial, the Space of Synagogues, with stones engraved with the words of Lviv’s Jews.
- Bernardine Monastery · A fortified monastery of the seventeenth century at the edge of the old town, part of the city’s defences. Beside it ran the walls that once enclosed both the Christian and the Jewish quarters of the town.
- Dominican Church · A baroque church with a great oval dome, built in the 1750s on the museum square. Under Soviet rule it was turned into a museum of religion and atheism, and it was returned to worship after independence in 1991.
- Lonsky Prison Museum · A prison used by the Polish police, then the Soviet NKVD, then the Gestapo, then the KGB. In June 1941, as the Germans invaded, the NKVD shot thousands of prisoners here; the Germans then used the killings to incite a pogrom against the city’s Jews. It is now a museum of all the regimes’ victims.
- Zhovkva · North of the city, a small town laid out in 1594 as an ideal Renaissance town, with a fortress-synagogue of 1692 whose walls and battlements were part of the defences — a reminder of the great Jewish communities of Galicia.
Hills, cemeteries and coffee
Around the old town Lviv climbs green hills: the castle mound with the best view, a cemetery of sculpture, a forest museum of wooden churches, and the great church of the Greek Catholics. In between, the city’s famous coffee houses. Half a day.
- High Castle · Almost nothing is left of the castle that gave the hill its name; in the nineteenth century the people of Lviv heaped up an artificial mound on its top to celebrate the union of Poland and Lithuania. From it the whole city spreads below.
- Lychakiv Cemetery · Opened in 1786, a romantic cemetery of statues and chapels under old trees, where Polish and Ukrainian poets, scientists and soldiers lie side by side — among them the writer Ivan Franko. Its newest graves are of soldiers killed in the current war.
- Shevchenko Grove · An open-air museum in a forest park, where wooden churches, farmhouses and mills were brought from the villages of the Carpathians and Galicia, among them a wooden church of the eighteenth century.
- Lviv Coffee Mine · Lviv is proud of its coffee culture, which it traces to the Habsburg years, when the city was the capital of Austrian Galicia and full of Viennese-style cafés. This one serves its coffee in a cellar dressed as a mine under the square.
- Potocki Palace · A palace in the French style built in the 1880s for the Potocki family, one of the great Polish noble houses, now part of the national art gallery.
- St George’s Cathedral · A rococo cathedral of the 1740s on a hill, the mother church of the Greek Catholics, who follow the Byzantine rite but are loyal to Rome. In 1946 the Soviets banned their church and gave its buildings to the Russian Orthodox; it worked underground for over forty years and was legal again only in 1989.
Getting to Lviv and getting around
- Lviv Main Station · Ukraine is at war and its airports are closed; most visitors arrive by train or bus from Poland. Check travel advice first
Cheap eats in Lviv
Lviv eats Galician — Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish together: varenyky, dumplings of potato, cheese or cherries; borshch; banosh, a cornmeal porridge of the Carpathians with sheep’s cheese; and the Lviv syrnyk, a baked cheesecake with raisins. The city is famous for coffee and chocolate, and its brewery has made beer since 1715. Prices are low by European standards.
- Rynok Square · Coffee, chocolate and syrnyk
- Lviv Coffee Mine · Coffee in the cellar mine
- Svobody Avenue · Varenyky and borshch in the old cafés
- Pharmacy Museum · The pharmacy’s iron wine tonic
Museums in Lviv
Lviv’s museums face its hard history: a prison of four regimes, the ruins of a synagogue, an old pharmacy, and the art collected by Polish nobles.
- Lonsky Prison Museum · A prison of four regimes
- Pharmacy Museum · Jars, scales and alchemy
- Potocki Palace · The national gallery
- Shevchenko Grove · Wooden churches in the forest
Nature and day trips near Lviv
Lviv is a green city of hills and parks around its old town, with forest walks on the castle hill and in the grove of wooden churches.
- High Castle · The view from the mound
- Shevchenko Grove · A forest park
- Lychakiv Cemetery · Old trees and sculpture
Things to do in Lviv with kids
With children: the tower of the city hall, chocolate being made in the windows, and the wooden village in the forest.
- City Hall · Climb the tower
- Shevchenko Grove · A village of wooden houses
- High Castle · Run up the hill
Holy places in Lviv
Lviv is a city of many churches — Latin, Armenian, Greek Catholic, Orthodox — and of the memory of a great Jewish community destroyed in the Holocaust.
- Golden Rose Synagogue · The ruins and the memorial
- Armenian Cathedral · The Armenian church of 1363
- St George’s Cathedral · The Greek Catholic cathedral
- Zhovkva · The fortress synagogue
- Boim Chapel · The black chapel and the Latin cathedral
Nightlife in Lviv
Lviv has a lively café and bar culture in its old town, but under wartime conditions there is a night curfew and air-raid alerts; check the current rules locally.
- Rynok Square · Bars and cafés in the old town, before curfew
- Opera House · Opera and ballet when performances run
Frequently asked questions about Lviv
What is there to see in Lviv?
The top sights in Lviv are Rynok Square, City Hall and Pharmacy Museum. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Lviv?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Lviv without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Lviv?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Lviv, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The market square and the cathedrals.
How do you get to Lviv and get around?
The main ways are Lviv Main Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Lviv, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Lviv that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Lviv for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.