The Trade Mission of Lviv

Throughout its history Lviv has always been a large trade centre and, for some time, the most well-known Eastern European city in the entire Europe. There was only one city of Eastern Europe marked on the French geographical map of 1492, and it was Leopolis.

Lviv owes its exceptional trade mission to its geographical location at the optimal intersection point of roads leading from the East to the West and back. Outstanding merchant talents were cherished among the people of Lviv from the beginning of time. Almost every citizen of Lviv was a natural-born merchant genius. The people of Lviv were noted for their experience, wit, courage, energy, and incessant aspiration for enrichment. In the 14th-15th centuries merchants were mostly citizens of German and Armenian origin.

Traditionally, precious fabrics, carpets, valuable roots, spices and fruits were transported from the East to Europe through Lviv, while clothes, weapons, silver and gold jewellery, and leather found their way from the West to the East.

In 1379 Lviv obtained the so-called right of storage. It meant that all merchants who were not from Lviv and transported any goods from the East or West through Lviv were obliged to put their goods up for sale in the city for two weeks. What they hadn’t sold, they could carry further. Of course, the deft merchants of Lviv bought these goods up at dumping prices, thus becoming wealthier themselves and making the city wealthier, too. The Magistrate of Lviv did its best to assist it citizens. Only members of the city’s community had the right to freely purchase goods from visiting merchants and sell these goods at stores. Foreign merchants were forbidden to perform trade transactions between themselves under the threat of confiscation of their entire stock.

The Shortest History of Lviv

The stormy and extremely interesting history of the unique Ukrainian city of Lviv is seven and a half centuries long. Lviv emerged in mid-13th century as the capital of a powerful Eastern European state – the Halychyna-Volyn Principality. Owing to its unique geographical location at the intersection of the main trade routes between the West and the East, in the 15th-17th centuries Lviv became the leading trade centre of the Eastern Europe and the largest city in Ukraine. Having spent half a millennium in the European cultural space, the city turned into a genuine architectural pearl, a centre of book printing, crafts and arts.

In the 18th-20th centuries Lviv as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire became known as the city of technical innovations. For instance, kerosene and the kerosene lamp were invented here for the first time in the entire world. In early 20th century Lviv became the capital of the third largest oil producing region after the USA and Russia. Lviv spent the period between 1939 and 1991 under the reign of totalitarian Soviet Union. From the first days of Ukraine’s independence Lviv obtained the status of the cultural and spiritual capital of the Ukrainian state. In 2004 Lviv acted as the principal social catalyst of the democratic Orange Revolution. Quite recently, in 2006, Lviv celebrated its 750th birthday.

the historic centre of Lviv was included into World heritage list of UNESCO in 1998

The East and the West at the Same Time

If we take a pair of compasses, place their one arm in the circle with the name “Lviv” written beside it, the other arm – in the circle that says “Feodosiya” (the medieval trade city of Kafa), and start rotating this latter arm in the western direction, it will soon hit another circle labelled “Venice”. It is truly amazing that Lviv lies at the same distance from Crimea and Southern Italy. This almost magic, mystical geographical location of Lviv brings the East and the West, Asia and Europe closer together.

Lviv is the city of the West and of the East at the same time. It owes its unique location at the mystical intersection of global cultural and civilizational influences to its historical karma. The city is advantageously and conveniently located at the geopolitical junction of two civilizations, at the tectonic fissure of two different and, at times, hostile cultures. For centuries Lviv has been trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. It was the place where the mysterious, irrational and despotic East merged with the heroic, romantic and pragmatic West. The principles of tolerance and respect to that of foreign origin, which can become factors of establishing the same ideas in the New Europe of the future, have been developing in the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural smelter of Lviv for centuries.

Lviv became the point of contact of two cultural worlds, an equidistant cultural and trading Mecca, which always worked as an invisible magnet attracting extremely talented people: architects, sculptors, artists, craftsmen, merchants, and public figures. They came here not only for innumerable and wondrous riches – majestic temples, luxurious palaces, stores filled with the most diverse goods from all over the world – but for the high level of culture and education, for intensive intellectual life. No matter where you came from – Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Greece or Armenia, – behind the walls of Lviv you would always find safe refuge and the opportunity to do what you liked most, to develop your skills and talents to the fullest …

The maps of old lviv

INTRODUCTION

According to the ancient chronicles Lviv was founded in 1256 by the Prince of Galicia and Volyn Danylo Romanovych, who named the town in honour of his son Lev. The centre of old Lviv was on the site of today's Old Rynok Square. Situated on the crossroads of trade routes, Lviv grew fast and soon became an important centre of commerce and crafts. Its location in the middle of Galicia-Volyn principality gave the town a considerable strategic value. In 1272 Prince Lev transferred the capital of the principality from Galych to Lviv. In 1349 Lviv was captured by the Polish King Kazimierz III, who ordered it to be moved more to the south. The new town was built to the plan of a traditional European settlement: a central square surrounded by living quarters and fortifications.
Not only merchants were attracted by the wealth of Lviv. In those days Tatars, Moldavians, Turks, rebellious Polish nobility were attacking Lviv, and the defences were a vital matter. Basically the system of fortifications was completed in 1445; it comprised the Higher and Lower Defence Walls with a ditch between them; a deep moat filled with water, which protected the town on the northern, eastern and southern sides; a defence rampart 16 metres high; the High and Low Castles. The river and impassable swamps shielded Lviv from the west. However, with the advent of firearms, such fortifications could afford little protection, and they underwent drastic alterations. High walls were replaced by lower and thicker ones; in place of towers with narrow embrasures, designed mainly for archers, there appeared basteas (semicircular defence structures with an open space in place of a roof on the top), two of which have been preserved until the present day (in Pidvalna Street and in Brativ Rogatyntsiv Street); earthworks became very common. The last significant addition to the town defences was the Royal Arsenal, constructed in 1639-1669 (13 Pidvalna Street).
The High Castle, built by the Polish King Kazimierz Ill, heavily fortified and located on a steep hill, 300 metres high, remained inaccessible for more than 300 years. It was only in 1648 that the High Castle was seized for the first time, by the Cossacks of Maxym Kryvonis. In 1672 Turks captured it almost without a fight. Later, little was done to save the Castle from decay, and in the 1870s it was dismantled, with a segment of its southern wall being preserved.
The Lower Castle, famous for its beauty, rebuilt after 1565 to replace earlier wooden ones, was located on the site presently occupied by the National Museum and Maria Zankovetska Theatre. Here in 1537 King Sigismund I the Old signed the Order which put an end to the absolute monarchy in Poland. The Swedish King Karl XII stayed in the Lower Castle in 1704 after capturing the city. A royal residence, the Castle also served as a prison for Polish nobility.
The devastating fire of 1527 razed Lviv to the ground, leaving only two structures: the Town Hall and one other building; the survival of the latter was attributed to the protection of the Holy Virgin. So intense was the fire, that it destroyed even stone structures and melted church bells and artillery guns.
Although the ban imposed on wooden construction in 1540 was not too strictly observed, the buildings which appeared later were largely built of stone. The most common type of building was a three-storeyed one, with three windows on each floor. The walls were covered with carpets, which later gave way to plaster. Furniture, mostly made of oak, solid, intricately carved and lavishly decorated; oriental carpets on the floor; kitchenware of silver and tin (which used to be almost as expensive as silver); glassware, often of coloured glass; clocks in bronze or gilded wood - these were to show the wealth of a house-owner. Paintings and books were not scarce in the town. Preference was given to Italian and Dutch painting; libraries with dozens or hundreds of volumes were quite common. The largest known library, with 1,200 books, belonged to John Alembek, the author of the first description of Lviv (1618), who died in 1636.
Without sanitation, the town was prone to epidemics. From the 14th to the 18th centuries 5 I epidemics were recorded in Lviv. The largest toll was taken by the so called Black Years of 1620- 1623, when two-thirds of the local population died.
Food was plain as elsewhere in those days; the typical menu consisted of cereals and vegetables. Fish was very popular. Trade in salted fish was one of the main sources of income for the Lviv treasury, with quality control being stringent. Only two species of fish out of dozens produced were awarded a quality certificate. Oriental spices, extremely expensive in Europe (for example, black pepper cost twice as much as gold in Western Europe), were cheap and accessible in Lviv, which was one of the few cities enjoying the right to the exclusive storage of oriental goods, which meant that such goods were to be sold to the local people for prices set by Lviv. In case of non-compliance, the whole caravan was confiscated.
Local town people loved good drinks. Among the popular drinks in Lviv were gori/ka and mead. Wine was very common. In addition to wine which came from Greece, Spain, Italy and Hungary, the city was manufacturing its own wine: vineyards were planted on the site of today's Lysenko Street 3.nd Klepariv. But the favourite drink was beer, which in those days was ~xported even to Bavaria. It took six weeks to transport Lviv beer there, md it did not spoil. Hardly any modern drink would stand such a test.
Disturbances were quelled in the city by local guards called "tsipaky". fhe name came from their main weapon, a military frail, in Ukrainian called 'tsip". There were 24 of them. Although their formal task was to patrol the :ity gates at night in fact they acted as a city police force. In case of ;erious riots, four haiduks, personal guards of the town Burgomaster, ntervened. Court decisions were carried out by an executioner, whose 1ickname, the Man Not Too Kind, became his formal title. The job was not )adly paid; however, very few volunteered to take that position, as the wIder, together with his family, was doomed to general hatred and :ontempt.
Little is known about what Lviv cemeteries of 14th_18th centuries looked ike. There were seven cemeteries located near the churches. The Catholics Ifere buried next to the Catholic cathedrals; the cemeteries of the Assumption Church and of the Armenian Cathedral served as a burial ground for the Orthodox and for the Armenians, respectively. The Jewish cemetery, dating from the 14th century and destroyed by the Nazi in the beginning of the 1940s, occupied the site of the present Krakiwsky Market. The rich were buried in church basements; the poor -- near the church. The tombstones, made of bronze, marble or alabaster, usually presented a sleeping man or woman. Such tombstones can be seen in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, the Jesuit and the Dominican Churches. The coffin carried a tomb portrait which after the funeral was moved to the church. The collections of Lviv History Museum and of Lviv Picture Gallery contain about 10 such portraits by unknown masters, which still impress the viewer with their vivid colours and deep psychological insight. Cemeteries, located on 36 hectares of the enclosed space, presented a danger to the health of people, and in 1783, on the order of Joseph 11, they were dismantled and moved outside the city's boundaries: only one - Lychakivsky cemetery¬has been preserved until the present day.