Lviv's location on an important trans-European trade route led to its development as a multinational city. In the princely times of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the majority of Lviv's population was Ruthenians (Ukrainians), but the city was also home to Germans, Armenians, Tatars, Jews, Karaites, and from the 15th century onwards, Poles and Jews were the dominant ethnic groups.

Traces of the historical presence of these ethnic groups can be found today not only in the city’s toponymy (e.g., Ruska, Armenian, Staroyevreiska streets), but also in the preserved architectural monuments. Lviv’s central square, Rynok Square, as well as the city centre buildings, are priceless examples of Italian Renaissance architecture (see Figure 1). In 1527, a great fire destroyed the entire Gothic Lviv, and the city was rebuilt in the new Renaissance style. The first Renaissance master is considered to be Peter the Italian from Lugano; other prominent architects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were Paolo Romano, Peter Barbon, Peter Krasovsky, and others [2].

Lviv was built according to the European model, with a central square surrounded by a continuous front of stone buildings. The facade decoration was based on Italian order schemes. Although the order as such was relatively rarely used in the architecture of Lviv, it was common to build a facade composition based on the proportional relations inherent in the order. Complicated cornices, attic elements, interfloor division, corner pilasters, and carved window frames were widely used to decorate the facades [2]. The visual dominants were the Town Hall located in the centre of Rynok Square (not preserved to this day) and the Latin Cathedral, which dates back to the fourteenth century (see Figure 2). [14]

Lviv’s Renaissance sacred architecture is represented by the ensemble of the Assumption Church, the Korniakt Tower, and the Chapel of the Three Saints (second half of the sixteenth century). This is a unique example of the synthesis of the Western European Renaissance and the local Old Ukrainian tradition (for instance, the use of a typical composition of a three-part and three-domed church, traditional for Ukrainian folk architecture), which created a coherent and aesthetically perfect composition [13] (as seen in Figure 3 & Figure 4).

There was an Armenian quarter within the built-up area of medieval Lviv. The bell tower for the Armenian Cathedral was built by the Italian architect Petro Krasovsky in the second half of the 16^th century (see Figure 5). The architecture of the bell tower used techniques typical of ancient Armenian architecture: the construction of towers with steep ends in the corners of the tent roof of the bell tower. The architectural decoration of the bell tower and inscriptions refer to Armenian identity [2].

In addition to Christian churches, Jewish synagogues were also built in Lviv at this time. The best of them was the Golden Rose / Turei Zahav Synagogue, the construction of which began in the Jewish quarter in 1582. This building was the centre of social life in the medieval Jewish quarter and one of the most beautiful synagogues in Eastern Europe [2] (see Figure 6). The Renaissance building was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941.

In 1772, Lviv became the capital of the largest province of the Habsburg monarchy. According to the Constitution of 1848, all subjects of the monarchy were granted equal rights. This was reaffirmed after the transformation of the monarchy into a dualistic empire in 1867 and guaranteed all citizens, regardless of recognition, the same rights and freedoms [27]. As a result, a special atmosphere of tolerance between people was created in Lviv.

In parallel, there was a process of national self-awareness and the emergence of political nations. Lviv was the „capital” of national revivals because the atmosphere here was freer than in Prussia or the Russian Empire. Polish and Ukrainian national revivals took place here, and Zionism was born in Lviv [22]. The city of Lviv began the 20^th century as a significant Austrian imperial city, being the centre of Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian communities that coexisted, although in conflict, and mutually enriched. At that time, Lviv was actively developing. The architecture of the city in the second half of the 19^th century is dominated by the influence of Vienna, which was one of the main European architectural centres at the time. However, the typology of buildings testified to a new political stage of the city’s development, as it was often associated with the theme of the autonomy of the province of Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One such example is the building of the Galician Sejm, which was built specifically for the needs of the newly formed elected regional body. The building was constructed in the popular Viennese Neo-Renaissance style by the German architect J. Hochberger in 1877-1881 [2] (see Figure 7).

One hundred years ago, from 1920 to 1939, Lviv was the capital of a Voivodeship within the Second Polish Republic, an independent Polish state. The new geopolitical significance of the young state, the strategic and cultural role of Lviv within it led to the rapid development of the city, including its architecture. The spatial development of the city in the interwar period was associated with the implementation of the concept of „Greater Lviv”, which was first clearly formulated by Ignacy Drexler in 1920 in his monograph of the same name, “Wielki Lwów. Le Grand Léopol”. [2]

It was the first to address the issue of the city's long-term development on the scale of suburban areas, to use the principle of functional zoning of urban areas for the first time, and to outline a programme of greening streets and squares. Linked to the idea of Greater Lviv was the concept of placing many sacred Catholic objects in the newly annexed suburban areas, which would mark Polish identity [4].

The idea of „Greater Lviv” in the context of the city being returned to Poland required other means of implementation, which was expressed primarily through the construction of monuments. The first wave of monuments, which most clearly semantically marked the environment as belonging to a certain national community, namely the Polish community, was erected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that time, about 15 monuments were erected in many of Lviv’s focal points. This first wave of monument construction was associated with romantic visions of Polishness in Lviv, which was still under Habsburg rule. In the interwar period, this theme was replaced by the glorification of the struggle for Lviv and Eastern Galicia during the First World War. [28]

Two monuments were erected to these soldiers. The first one was erected not far from the train station, where numerous battles took place, and the other in the courtyard of the Polytechnic, where Polish soldiers buried their comrades during the war. The most important place of worship for the fallen heroes, the Lviv Eagles Memorial, was built by Rudolf Indruch near the Lychakiv Cemetery in 1936. [24]

There was a lot of evidence of the presence of Jews in Lviv: about a hundred synagogues and houses of learning, a Jewish cemetery in the very centre of the city, and the open and active work of numerous Jewish societies. Ukrainian identity in the public space of the city was reflected in the characteristic silhouettes of churches and forms of Ukrainian architectural modernism of the beginning of the 20^th century. [9]

At the beginning of the Second World War, about 50% of the population of Lviv was Polish, 35% was Jewish, and Ukrainians formed the third largest ethnic group, accounting for about 13%. The objects marking the city's multiethnic identity were presented in proportion to their share in the ethnic composition of Lviv.

For Lviv, World War II began on 1 September 1939 with the bombing of the Main Railway Station by Luftwaffe aircraft. On 12 September, the Scherner motorised military group under the command of Frederick Scherner, created to capture Lviv, received an order to seize Lviv, and at 14:00, the assault on the city began. Despite the hopes of the Nazi command for a quick capture of Lviv, the city held its defence for almost ten days under the command of General Władysław Längner. It is worth noting that, despite the complicated interethnic relations that developed in the city in the interwar period, the majority of the city’s citizens – Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews – defended the city and the state against the Nazis. According to various estimates, between 150,000 and 200,000 Ukrainians fought in the ranks of the Polish army, including in the defence of Lviv, against the Wehrmacht in September 1939. [10]

On 17 September 1939, Soviet troops entered Lviv, and on 22 September, General W. Längner was forced to sign the "Protocol on the Transfer of Lviv to Soviet Troops". The first Soviet occupation of Lviv began. At the time of the Red Army’s arrival in Lviv, according to Soviet statistics, 345 thousand people lived there. Soviet rule and the outbreak of the Second World War brought a huge wave of emigration from both the West and the East. Jews fleeing the Nazis came from the west, and Russians from the east. The same Soviet statistics state that in the pre-war period, the population reached even 500 thousand people. [6]

The Soviet government began with repression. Between 1939 and 1941 (before the Nazi occupation of Lviv), deportations were carried out in several stages. In Lviv, the first to be deported were Poles: prisoners of war from camps, former capitalists – landowners, manufacturers, and high-ranking officials. This category of the population was deported to Kazakhstan for a standard period of 10 years. At dawn on 20 June 1940, about 22,000 refugees from Western Europe (Poles and Jews) were taken beyond the Urals. Almost 80 % of them were Jews. Before the outbreak of war with Germany, in May 1941, the Soviet authorities managed to carry out another deportation. At that time, several hundred members of Ukrainian and Polish underground organisations and their families were deported from Lviv. The deportees were sentenced to 20 years of resettlement in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan [11].

Changes in the ethnic composition were accompanied by changes in the architectural life of the city. After the arrival of Soviet troops, a group of architects from Soviet Ukraine was sent to Lviv and immediately began work on the first Soviet master plan for the city. The first, incomplete general plan of Lviv in 1939 proposed several ideas according to which the „strong hand of the Bolsheviks” was to transform the city from a „consumerist” city into an ‘industrial’ and ‘socialist’ city. In terms of implementing the ideas of the first Soviet master plan for Lviv, only two were implemented due to the lack of time: the city was divided into four administrative districts, and a temporary monument to „Reunification’ was erected on the former Legion Street (now Svobody Avenue). Both implementations, especially the monument, were primarily propaganda. The newly formed districts were named, for example: Stalinsky (Central), Krasnoarmeysky (district of the Red Army), Zaliznychnodorozhny (district of the Main Railway Station), and Shevchenkivsky (district in hounor of Taras Shevchenko - a prominent Ukrainian poet). [[5]; [6]]

Lviv was reoccupied by the Nazis on 30 June 1941, and the occupation lasted until 27 July 1944. During this time, the city underwent dramatic changes. First of all, this affected the urban space: a separate area was allocated for the forced isolation of the Jewish population, the ghetto, the Janowska camp and other places of forced labour, and a camp for Soviet prisoners of war were created; a system of deportation of Jews from the Galician region through Lviv to death camps was also established, and controlling and executive bodies (occupation and Jewish) were organised, which worked under the constant supervision of the Nazis [15]. At the same time, the Nazis destroyed visual traces of the presence of Jews in Lviv: during the German occupation, almost all synagogues were destroyed, and only 2 out of more than a hundred survived. [17]

In addition, the German occupation administration considered it necessary to emphasise the importance of the ‘new government’ through urban planning and architecture. The model for German urbanists was the 1942 plan for the redevelopment of the centre of Berlin, developed by Albert Speer. Based on the Berlin model, Lviv was to receive a new urban axis – Ringstrasse, for the construction of which it was necessary to destroy part of the historical buildings. It was also proposed to build several significant public buildings that were to change the architectural image of Lviv. Due to a lack of time, the project has not even begun. The only thing that the German occupation authorities were ready to implement was to erect a monument to Hitler on the site of the former Soviet monument to „Reunification” (see Figure 8). [2]

After the surrender of Nazi Germany and the reincorporation of Lviv into the Soviet Union, serious changes in the city's life took place. The new arrival of the Soviet administration in July 1944 was accompanied by a wave of new repressions and arrests. Over five days, from 3 to 8 January, about 17,300 people were arrested [16].

Thus, the Second World War was a huge tragedy for the ethnic composition of Lviv. According to historians, between 1939 and 1945, Lviv lost 80% of its indigenous population. Lviv's Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust (in July 1944). The Red Army entered Lviv, a city where, in 1931, there were about 100,000 Jews; only 3,400 remained. Poles were deported to Poland in 1946 by the Stalinist regime. Soviet totalitarianism affected thousands of Ukrainians, who were deported to Siberia in echelons, killed in prisons, and taken for forced labour in Germany.

The Second World War also had catastrophic consequences for Lviv’s multiculturalism. The expulsion and elimination of the largest national groups of historic Lviv, the Poles and Jews, led to the demise of its traditional multinationality, which was oriented towards European culture. Stalin's Iron Curtain only completed the subsequent isolation and devastation of historic Lviv. The demographic composition of the city changed significantly: during the first ten years of the postwar period, about 270,000 new residents from Russia, Eastern Ukraine, and local peasants moved to Lviv. [3]

On 13 April 1945, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution “On the reconstruction and development of industry, transport, and municipal services in the city of Lviv”. According to this resolution, Lviv was turning into the largest industrial centre in Western Ukraine. Workers from the east of Ukraine were sent to the city to build a completely different Lviv. The issue of planning Lviv during the heyday of Stalin’s dictatorship could not help but aim to transform its image. In the new post-war master plan for the reorganisation of the city centre, the authors proposed the so-called “Urban Compositional Axis”. It was also proposed to build a new Central Square in Lviv (the city did not have a large enough area for communist parades and rallies), which was to be located immediately behind the Opera House on the site of Jewish ghetto buildings partially destroyed during the German occupation. The compositional basis of the square was to be a monument to Stalin, which was to be placed on the axis of the new building of party and Soviet bodies, designed in the architectural forms of classicism. Perpendicular to the new Central Square and the main compositional axis of the city in the North-South direction, the main ‘boulevard highway’ in the West-East direction was laid out, leading to the High Castle mountain. The “boulevard highway” was supposed to end with a grandiose monument to Lenin. This was hindered by Stalin’s death in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev’s subsequent struggle against both the cult of Stalin’s personality and his architecture (see Figure 9). The grandiose axes remained only on paper. [6]

The intensive “Sovietisation” of Lviv continued. In 1952, the first monument representing the new regime was erected. It was a monument to Lenin on the main boulevard in front of the Opera House, which had been laid before the war (see Figure 10). In the same year, a memorial to Soviet soldiers who died in World War II, “Hill of Glory”, was unveiled, which also served as a memorial complex. The memorial became a venue for numerous Soviet holidays. [7]

Traces of the Polish and Ukrainian presence were systematically removed (all Polish and Ukrainian pre-war memorial plaques were destroyed). Instead, 80 new plaques were installed: 21 of them are dedicated to Soviet figures (whose nationality, in accordance with Soviet ideology, was hardly mentioned in the inscriptions); 47 to Soviet events. A proportionally small number of plaques were dedicated to Ukrainian historical figures. Other ethnic groups remained virtually invisible in the urban landscape during the Soviet era. [28]

In the 1960s and 1980s, numerous Soviet monuments were erected in Lviv. Among them, in 1962, a monument to the hero of the Soviet Union, Nikolai Kuznetsov, was unveiled, and in 1970, the most remarkable monument – the Monument to the Glory of the Soviet Army was erected (see Figure 11). In addition, monuments were erected that combined Sovietism with elements of local Western Ukrainian culture. [26]

Undoubtedly, Lviv was developing in the architectural aspect: new residential neighbourhoods, public buildings, and service facilities were built. However, in a totalitarian society, architecture and art also become tools of ideological propaganda. Monumental art became widespread: the walls of major public buildings were covered with numerous mosaics and graffiti on the theme of a happy life in the Soviet Union, eternal friendship between peoples, and a bright communist future. The city was red with numerous flags, posters, and slogans.

Soviet manipulations led to the almost complete destruction of Polish and partially Ukrainian memorials and the root identity of Lviv, which has virtually lost its historical multinationality. On the eve of independence, according to the 1989 census, 786.9 thousand people lived in Lviv. Ukrainians were the dominant ethnic group -79.1%, Russians -16.1%, Jews -1.6%, and Poles -1.2%. A small share was also made up of Belarusians (0.7%), Moldovans (0.2%), Armenians (0.1%), Tatars (0.1%), and other nationalities (0.8%). The city has effectively become mono-national, with the presence of other ethnic groups not significantly affecting the ethnic pattern of the city. However, most importantly, despite the dominance of Ukrainians, Lviv was not a Ukrainian city. It was a Russified environment typical of Soviet cities, representing Soviet identity. [6]

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Ukraine’s independence affected the ethnic composition of Lviv: the city became even more mono-national. Poles and Jews actively emigrated during the unstable period of the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Thus, in 2001, almost 89% of the population identified themselves as Ukrainians, with 9% of the remaining Russians, only 0.3% identified themselves as Jews, and 0.6% as Poles. However, immediately after the declaration of independence, the city’s public set out to revive traditional multiethnicity in the public space of Lviv and return it to the bosom of Western civilisation. First of all, it concerned the revival of the idea of Ukrainian identity in Lviv, as well as Polish and Jewish identity as the main pre-war ethnic groups. [6]

The process of ideological decolonisation of the memory of the Soviet past took place through the dismantling of symbolic markers, the first of which was the monument to Lenin, which was dismantled before the declaration of independence. The personality of the leader of the world proletariat was the most significant in the struggle for state independence. Therefore, this monument was the first among those dismantled with the sanction of the local authorities in September 1990. Over time, other monuments to the military and public figures loyal to the Soviet government were also dismantled. However, an exception was made for Soviet cemeteries and memorials to the Second World War. For example, the “Hill of Glory”, founded in 1952, still stands in its original form. [28]

At the same time, a new identity, the Ukrainian identity, was being formed. The Ukrainisation of Lviv’s public space began with the renaming of streets and squares, the elimination of Soviet functions of buildings, the demolition of old monuments, and the construction of new ones. An interesting experience was the wide involvement of the public in the renaming process. For example, students’ appeal for John Lennon Street. Other renamings were heatedly debated in the local media, such as the renaming of Lermontov Street, previously dedicated to the famous Russian writer, to Dudayev Street, named after the Chechen leader killed during the first Russian-Chechen conflict. [28]

The most significant new monument is the monument to Taras Shevchenko, a prominent Ukrainian poet and national hero, erected on Svobody Avenue and unveiled in 1996 (see Figure 12). To the left of the poet’s figure is the Wave of National Revival, a 12-metre-high symbolic stele with figurative bas-reliefs. After its construction, the overall sculptural composition was completed: the figured reliefs on it symbolically depict the history of Ukraine from the times of Kyivan Rus to the early 20^th century on the front side and the history of Ukraine in the 20^th century on the back side. [2]

The statue of the Mother of God, which had been erected there in the late nineteenth century and removed during the Soviet era, was returned to its original place on Svobody Avenue. There was a triumphant rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which had been repressed by the Soviet regime and functioned underground. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church proved to be one of the most successful institutions that preserved and transmitted Western Ukrainian national identity. [9]

The construction of the monument to King Danylo, the legendary founder of Lviv and an outstanding military leader, in 2001 became another symbol of national revival (as seen in Figure 13). He is one of the most famous and at the same time the most iconic figures of Ukraine’s medieval history – Prince of Galicia, Volyn, and the Grand Duke of Kyiv. On 7 October 1253, Prince Danylo Romanovych of Galicia and Volhynia accepted the royal crown from the pope's ambassadors and became a full-fledged European monarch – the King of Rus. The monument reads ‘King Danylo’ and thus emphasises the city's European orientation, while the historical figure is interpreted as an integrator of Ukraine into Western civilisation. [2]

Alongside the main narrative of showcasing the Ukrainian image of the city, there is another strong trend that can be described as an attempt to symbolically ‘write’ the city back into the wider European historical past. The narrative of Lviv’s “Europeanness” is articulated in different ways, most notably in the use of ‘European’ names for restaurants or cafes (e.g., Vienna Coffee House).

The new geopolitical realities and tragic events that Ukraine has faced in the twenty-first century are reflected in the images of public space. On 23 August 2019, the Memorial to the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, Ukrainian citizens who were shot dead on Independence Square in Kyiv in the winter of 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity, was unveiled in Lviv. The authors of the competition project were young Lviv architects: A. Lesiuk, M. Yastrubchak, and H. Pundak. This space conveys the spirit of modernity and perpetuates memory. It is a complex structure, a linear square on different levels, organically integrated into the urban landscape. The main material of the project is corten, which changes its texture over time and has a special symbolism of struggle and burning fire. The memorial is filled with cereal plants that will resemble ears of wheat, which is a symbol of the Ukrainian people [29] (see Figure 14).

Poles and Jews, who are now a national minority in the city, occupied a dominant position in symbolic Lviv and shaped its identity. Today, their memory is represented in different ways in the city's urban landscape. An example is the advertising inscriptions on the walls in Polish and Hebrew. Some of them are authentic and some are new, created specifically to emphasise the city's multinational past.

Lviv is a significant symbolic city for the Polish community. It is one of the founding cities of Poland, a centre of culture, history, and science. It was in Lviv that dozens of scientific societies began their activities, including the Lviv School of Mathematics, the Lviv-Warsaw School of Philosophy, the Polish Historical and Geographical Societies, and the School of Art History. Therefore, the revival of Polish identity in the public space of the city is of great importance both in the context of restoring multiculturalism and in the context of the search for historical truth.

The most important place of worship for the Polish community is the memorial to the fallen heroes, the Lviv Eagles Memorial (see Figure 15). The necropolis was not destroyed during the Second World War, and in Soviet times, it slowly fell into disrepair. In 1956, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier’s tombstone was taken to Poland. In the 1970s, the colonnade and most of the tombs were destroyed by tanks and bulldozers. Only the pylons survived, their foundations having been securely reinforced during construction. In 1991, the memorial was rebuilt and inaugurated with the participation of the President of Poland, A. Kwasniewski, and the President of Ukraine, V. Yushchenko. [24]

The destruction by the Nazis of prominent representatives of the Polish intellectual elite in Lviv in July 1941 is one of the most dramatic events of the Second World War. On the night of 4 July 1941, the Gestapo executed 36 professors of Lviv universities, including world-class scholars. According to the results of an international competition in 2010 for the best monument to the victims, the joint Polish-Ukrainian project by sculptor O. Śliwa (Kraków) and architects O. Trofymenko and D. Sorokevych (Lviv) won. The monument is a kind of arch consisting of 10 stones symbolising the 10 Commandments of God. The fifth commandment – „Thou shalt not kill!” - is significantly broken, as if it were knocked down. This symbolises that when a person breaks a commandment of God, there is a threat to destroy the integrity of the world (see Figure 16). In 2011, a monument was inaugurated at the site of the shooting. [8]

The life of today’s Lviv is inextricably linked to its Polish past. This is evident in all aspects of public life: in the specific Galician dialect, street names, and cafes. An informal reminder of the city’s multicultural and multilingual past is the inscriptions on the walls of buildings, primarily in Polish (but also in Hebrew and German). These are mostly advertising texts. They were created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and in the interwar period. Often, such inscriptions are accidentally discovered during facade restoration and are carefully preserved and displayed, as they are also important witnesses to Lviv’s rich history (see Figure 17).

In Soviet times, the topic of the Jews of Lviv and their culture and architecture was banned. There were practically no Jews left in the city: by 1944, their number was only 1.1% of the total number of residents. In 1962, the Jewish community was liquidated. Only on the eve of the declaration of the Independence of Ukraine, the public organization Lviv Society of Jewish Culture named after Sholom Aleichem, the purpose of which was the preservation of Jewish heritage, the maintenance of traditions, and charitable activities. The architectural space of Lviv is full of monuments of the Jewish past. We can trace this in the names of streets and squares. Near the entrances to many tenement houses in the city center, we can see traces of mezuzahs, visual traces of the former presence of buildings (marking the contours of the Great City Synagogue and the “House of Wisdom” on Staroyevreyska Street), memorial signs on the sites of destroyed buildings (on the site of the synagogue “Temple”) [31].

In 1989, the Society of Jewish Culture named after Sholom-Aleichem took the initiative to build a monument to the victims of the Lviv ghetto. At that time, the project of the monument had already been proposed, and its author was a former Lviv woman, resident of Jerusalem, sculptor Louise Shterenstein. Despite the difficulties (economic and political), the construction was completed successfully, and on August 23, 1992, the memorial complex in honor of the victims of the Lviv ghetto (1941-1943) was solemnly opened (see Figure 18). It is symbolic that the monument is cast as an image of an old man in grief and prayer, who raises his head and hands to the sky. The marble path that leads to it imitates the “road of death”. Symbolic tombstones are located to the right of the monument, and behind it is a tree planted as a sign of peace and continuation of life. A massive black menorah symbolizes eternal respect for the dead.

Next to the monument, in 2015, the memorial museum “Territory of Terror” was opened on the site of the former Jewish ghetto (1941-1943) and transit prison (1944-1955), which is dedicated to the memory of hundreds of thousands of people murdered in this place, including Jews (see Figure 19). On the territory of the museum barracks, watchtowers, barricades, and other infrastructure objects have been recreated [30].

To preserve the Jewish cultural heritage and the memory of its creators, the city authorities and the public of the city, as well as in cooperation with the Center for the Urban History of Central and Eastern Europe and the German Society for International Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellshaft für Internationalle Zusammenarbeit, Giz), organized an international competition to perpetuate the memory Jewish places in Lviv. The competition lasted from August to December 2010. The proposal of the Berlin architect Franz Reschke to arrange the memorial “Synagogue Space” in such a way as to “interpret emptiness as the main concept” was recognized as the best. Since then, a team made up of several institutions, including the Franz Reschke Landschaftsarchitektur office, has developed and implemented the project. On September 4, 2016, the first part of the project was opened to the general public. It includes the conservation of the remains of the Golden Rose Synagogue, the marking of the foundation of the Jewish House of Learning, Beit Hamidrash, and the installation of the memorial installation “Immortization” (see Figure 18). The spaces should symbolize and reveal the historical traditions of each building and give this public space a new quality in the daily life of the city [31].

According to the reports of the commissioners for the affairs of religious cults, until the end of the 1980s, there was not a single Muslim community or registered group of Muslims in Western Ukraine. Only after Ukraine became independent in 1991, Muslim believers gain the opportunity to practice their religion freely. In 1993, the Lviv Muslim religious community was officially registered. During the years of Independence, the religious community of Muslims in Lviv created a spiritual school for studying the basics of Islam, the Koran, and the Arabic language for adults and teenagers, and obtained from the Lviv authorities the allocation of a plot for the burial of the dead. In Lviv, the Tatar cultural and educational society "Tugan Tel", the youth public organization "En Nebras", and others launched their activities [23].

The aggression of the Russian Federation against our state in 2014, the occupation of Crimea, and the outbreak of the bloody Russian-Ukrainian war on February 24, 2022, led to the appearance in Ukraine of such a new and tragic phenomenon for our country as internal refugees. More than 2,000 people arrived in the Lviv region from Crimea alone, among them many Muslims. Now their number is greater, but, unfortunately, there are no exact statistics. The Muslim community is not numerous, but it is extremely active [25].

In 2015, the Islamic Cultural Center was named after Muhammad Asad. At the opening of the center, Sheikh Said Ismagilov, Mufti of the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Ukraine "Umma" said that: "We say that without a doubt Lviv is a great European, Christian city. The city's Muslim community is not large, but we really want it to be integrated into Lviv society". The first Ukrainian translation of the Koran from Arabic was also presented at the opening of the center [1].

Currently, there are already four mosques operating in Lviv. Mosques are visited not only by Muslim residents of Lviv, who are no more than 2-3%, but also by many Muslims from the number of visiting students: Arabs, Africans [20]. One of these mosques, opened in 2022, has a minaret - it is the first minaret in the architectural image of Lviv, which enriches the identity of a multicultural city (see Figure 21).

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sector/ individuals.

All visual surveys and other human-related interactions were conducted under the supervision and with the approval of the Institute of Architecture at the National University "Lviv Polytechnic", by its ethical research guidelines.

The authors declare there is no conflict.