Cathedrals and Churches Transcendent Lviv

Where Do We Begin?

Well one sure way to help you decide would be to narrow the options for our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tours down a little by preparing a list of perhaps a dozen of Lviv’s most culturally relevant and popular Sacral Sites for you to choose from – seven of which have been designated as historic architectural and religious components of the city’s Old Town designation in 1998 as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

So let’s start there.

The Church of The Transfiguration.

The first stop on our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tours is at the Church of the Transfiguration located in Lviv’s Old Town, just north of Rynok Square. Originally built as the Roman Catholic Church of The Holy Trinity of the Trinitarian Order, between 1703 and 1731, the monastery was abolished by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and the church was used as a library of the Lviv University, until destroyed by Austrian artillery in 1848.

Subsequently rebuilt by the Greek Catholic Church with much of its original design preserved, an apse was added to the short presbytery and domes that now dominate the facade were added to the churches towers and the site re-consecrated in 1906 as the Greek Catholic church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the first half of the 20th century, the parish became one of the main cultural centers of the Ukrainian national movement.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the parish became the first to be restored under newly independent Ukraine.

The Armenian Cathedral.

One shining example of Transcendent Lviv’s ethnic and religious diversity is the Armenian Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary, located in the city’s Old Town, North of Rynok Square.  Originally founded by an Armenian merchant from Caffa in the mid-14th Century, a small Armenian church was erected on this site.  A century later it was surrounded by a gallery arcade – the Southern portion of which still exists.

From the 17th century until 1945, the cathedral belonged to the Armenian Catholic Archdiocese of Lviv, in union with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1945 the new Soviet authorities decided to eliminate the Armenian Catholic Archdiocese of Lviv, and arrested its last administrator, the Rev. Dionizy Kajetanowicz  – who was subsequently murdered in a Soviet gulag in 1954. Almost all the Polish Armenians were expelled to the West, the cathedral closed, and its building used for storing plundered sacral art.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a handful of Armenian Catholic families attempted to reestablish the parish.  Local Ukrainian authorities passed the cathedral to the Armenian Apostolic Church and by 1997 an Armenian Apostolic eparchy was established in Lviv and on 18 May 2003 the cathedral was re-consecrated.

The Southern yard located between the street and the cathedral features the remains of an Armenian cemetery from the 16th and 17th centuries paved and lined with gravestones, the oldest one being 600 years old, transferred from cemeteries of other Armenian churches and monasteries in Lviv.

The Dominican Church.

Our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tour continues with a visit to the Dominican Church and Monastery located in the Lviv’s Old Town, East of Rynok Square. It was originally built as the Roman Catholic church of Corpus Christi, and today serves as the Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Eucharist.

The Dominican Order first arrived in Lviv during the 13th century and the first wooden church is said to have been built in 1234.  That church subsequently burned down a little more than a century later and a new one was erected on the present site in 1378 and was repaired and re-built following fires in both the 15th and 16th centuries.  By 1745 it was decided to take the building apart and replace it with a new one.

In 1749 Józef Potocki laid the cornerstone for the present day Baroque church, its design commonly attributed to Jan de Witte and by 1764 the new church was reconsecrated. After World War II, the complex was re-purposed by the Soviets as a warehouse, and in the 1970s changed into a museum of religion and atheism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the church was given to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and now serves as a parish church.  The monastery portion however, still serves as The Lviv Museum of The History of Religion.

The Dormition Church.

The next stop on our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tours is an architectural wonder. The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lviv – commonly known as the Dormition Church, or historically as the Wallachian Church –  is a Renaissance style Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Lviv, located in the Old Town built during the period 1591-1629.  The adjacent Korniakt bell tower – after the donor, Konstiantyn Korniakt, who financed it – was erected in the years 1571-1578 by Peter Barbon, considered one of the most precious monuments of Ukrainian architecture of the sixteenth century Mannerism style.

The Orthodox Church complex consists of a church building, a bell tower (Korniakt Tower) and a chapel – Chapel of the Three Saints – named after a church that had been destroyed during a siege in 1340. The chapel has a simple construction: a rectangular floor plan with three domes topped with lanterns. Its portal, which is decorated with a grapevine relief, is one of the architectural masterpieces of Lviv.

Saints Peter and Paul Church.

Saints Peter and Paul Church [AKA Garrison Church] – also known to Lviv’s residents as the Jesuit Church – an example of Early Baroque design – is the next stop on our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tour.  Built during the beginning of the 17th century, resembling Rome’s Il Gesù Cathedral it is considered to be one of the most beautiful religious buildings in Lviv.

Jesuits came to Lviv in 1584 and by 1590 the first wooden church of the Society of Jesus was erected near the Western part of the city’s defensive walls where the Jesuit Gate was located. Construction of the existent Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul began in 1610 and by 1630 the church was completed and consecrated. After the dissolution of the Jesuit Order by papal edict in 1773, the building was used as a military garrison church. After Pope Pius VII renewed the Jesuit Order in 1814, Jesuits returned to Lviv by 1820,

The Garrison Church suffered considerable damage during the two World Wars and by 4 June 1946 the Jesuit monks were forced to leave Lviv taking with them what little precious iconography they could salvage, after which the church remained closed for 65 years as the new Soviet regime considered religion to be a destructive and archaic relic of ignorant people.

For some time the church was used as a warehouse until the 1970s when it was given to the Lviv Vasyl Stefanyk Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for use as a book depository.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the building remained a book depository – at one time home to more than 2.3 million volumes – but decades of neglect and damage from roof leaks had destroyed the priceless frescos which had once lined the central and lateral naves of its interior.

In 2010, The Lviv Town Hall transferred ownership of the Garrison Church to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church after which the work of clearing the church building of books and shelves began during October and November of 2011 and the slow process of restoration continues to the present.

The Latin Cathedral.

Next on our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tour is the Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – usually called simply the Latin Cathedral – a 14th-century Roman Catholic cathedral located in the Lviv’s Old Town near Rynok Square.

The first church built on this site was a small wooden Roman Catholic church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, built in 1344 and lost in a fire six years later. In 1360, king Casimir III of Poland began the construction of the present day Gothic style church.  Construction work continued throughout the 15th century and the Cathedral was finally consecrated in 1481.

In the years 1761–1776 the Latin Cathedral was refurbished in Baroque style with a new tall bell tower and an icon of the Mother of God held in the Cathedral having been attributed to religious miracles was installed in the main altar.

Miraculously, The Latin Cathedral was not closed down during the post-war Soviet Era but the holy icon of the Madonna was removed from its altar and sent to Krakow ultimately winding up in the Lubaczów Cathedral of Eastern Poland.

Boim Chapel.

The Boim Chapel is a monument of religious architecture in Cathedral Square, constructed from 1609 to 1615 and is part of Lviv’s Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The chapel was built for the Boim family on land that was once an urban cemetery adjacent to the Latin Cathedral. 14 members of the Boim family are buried there. The chapel was built on a square plan and is covered by a paneled dome based on an octagonal tambour. The chapel lantern rises on eight fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals, covered again with a small dome, adorned atop with a statue of a pensive Christ.

Golden Rose Synagogue.

Next on our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tour is the Golden Rose Synagogue, known also as the Nachmanowicz Synagogue, or the Turei Zahav Synagogue was the oldest synagogue in Ukraine.  In 1941, the synagogue was desecrated, and in 1943 demolished by the Nazis. There is a plaque commemorating the Golden Rose Synagogue: “Remnant of the old temple called Di Goldene Royz“.

Built during 1580-1595 by Yitzhak Nachmanowicz and dedicated in memory of Nachmanowicz’s wife, the building was designed by the Italian architect Pablo Romano.  In 1606 the building was confiscated by the Jesuits. In 1609, after paying a ransom of 20,600 guilders the synagogue was returned to the Jewish community. A local legend ascribed the successful restitution of the synagogue to Rosa bat Ya’akov, Yitzhak’s daughter-in-law. The synagogue was thereafter also called the Golden Rose Synagogue in her honor.

The members of the Jewish community of Lviv desire a reconstruction of the synagogue “as it once was”. The project by the Office of Historic Environment Preservation of Lviv City Council, commissioned 2016, envisages a commemorative space.

The Bernardine Monastery and Church of Saint Andrew.

Our tour of Transcedant Lviv continues with a visit to the Bernardine Church and Monastery in Lviv, Ukraine, is located in the city’s Old Town, south of the market square. The monastery along with the Roman Catholic Church of St. Andrew, today the Greek Catholic Church of St. Andrew, now belong to the Order of St. Basil the Great.

In the 17th century the present day church and monastery were constructed in the style of Italian and Dutch Mannerism and consecrated in 1630. As the complex was located outside Lviv’s city walls it was equipped with its own fortifications from the east and south, which were mostly dismantled at the beginning of the 19th century.

The church managed to avoid being closed by the Austrian emperor Joseph II, although part of the monastery was taken over for the city archive [which is still there]. After the Second World War the church was closed by the Soviets and fell into disuse until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1991 the complex has been under the auspices of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Basilian Order and has undergone a thorough renovation.

Wait!  There’s more!

But the following Mystical Sites available via our private Transcendent Lviv Guided Tour options will take a bit more time and effort to visit so maybe you should plan on hopping aboard our minvan and we’ll take you right there; plus you’ll get to see more of Lviv – the Cultural Capital of Ukraine.

The Church of Saints Olha and Elizabeth.

The Church of Sts. Olha and Elizabeth in Lviv, was originally built as the Roman Catholic Church of St. Elizabeth and today serves as the Greek Catholic Church of Sts. Olha and Elizabeth.  The church was built in during the period 1903-1911 from a design by Polish architect Teodor Talowski in the neo-Gothic style, similar to that of the Votive Church in Vienna, to serve as a parish church for the city’s dynamically developing western suburbs.

Placed on a hill near the city’s main train station with its facade flanked by two tall towers and an 85 m belfry on the north side with imposing spires, this gem of Gothic design was envisioned as Lviv’s first landmark to greet visitors arriving in the city by train and is a must-see for any visitor to Lviv and why we’ve included it on our list of Transcendent Lviv sites.

After the war, the building was used as warehouse and fell further into disrepair, until collapse of the Soviet Union when it was re-patriated by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1991.

Tsori Gilod Synagogue.

The Tsori Gilod Synagogue, also known as Beis Aharon V’Israel Synagogue, is the only functioning Jewish Orthodox synagogue in Lviv.  Built in 1925, the synagogue was designed by Albert Kornblüth in the Baroque style with its construction financed by the Jewish charity “Tsori Gilod“.

The building managed to survive the war as the Nazis used it as a horse stable. After 1945, under the Soviet regime, the synagogue was used as a warehouse. In 1989, the building was returned to the Jewish community. It was renovated from 1995 to 1997, and again from 1999 to 2000.

St. George’s Cathedral.

The final stop on our Transcendent Lviv Guided Tour is at St. George’s Cathedral – a baroque–rococo cathedral constructed between 1744-1760 on a hill overlooking the city of Lviv. This is the third manifestation of a church to have been erected on this site since the 13th century, and its prominence has repeatedly made it a target for invaders and vandals.

A church has stood on St. George Hill since around 1280, dating back to a time when the area was still part of the Principality of Halych-Volhynia. Construction of the present Cathedral was started in 1746 by Metropolitan Athanasius Sheptytsky and finished in 1762 by Leo Sheptytsky. and by the 19th century St. George’s Cathedral had become the mother church of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

After World War II, Soviet authorities began persecuting the UGCC, imprisoning the church hierarchy and ultimately forcing the UGCC and other Roman Catholic parishes in Ukraine to become part of the Russian Orthodox Church. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the UGCC re-emerged and began to reclaim parishes which they had ceded 45 years earlier.

On August 12, 1990, members of the People’s Movement of Ukraine party occupied and commandeered the cathedral. Two days later, the governing council of the Lviv Oblast recognized UGCC’s claim to the cathedral, and it has remained a center for the UGCC throughout these early years of Ukraine’s independence.

Want to see more of Western Ukraine‘s Mystical Lviv?  Watch our short videos on Mystical Lviv: The Churches and The Cathedral.