Lviv

Capital and industrial city of Lviv region (oblast), western Ukraine, 450 km/280 mi southwest of Kiev; population (2001) 732,800. Lviv is an important manufacturing centre and transport junction. There are chemical, metallurgical, and engineering industries in the city; manufactured goods include motor vehicles, agricultural equipment, textiles, and electronics. Lviv was the principal city of the historical region known as Galicia. The Ivan Franko University was founded in 1661. The city was the centre of the revival of Ukrainian nationalism and the resurgence of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the 1980s.

Lviv was formerly a trade and transit centre on the Black Sea–Baltic and east–west routes. Founded as a fortress town against Mongol invasion in 1256 by a Galician prince (the name means ‘city of Leo’ or ‘city of Lev’), it was Polish from 1340 until 1772, Austrian (1772–1918), Polish (1919–39), and under German administration from 1941 to 1944. During the Nazi occupation, the Jewish community that had been present in the city since 1349 was wiped out. Lviv, which had been seized by Soviet troops in 1939, was finally annexed by the USSR in 1945.

The city's buildings escaped devastation during World War II; many Gothic, Renaissance, and baroque houses and public buildings survive in the Old Town.