Lviv, Ukraine's First Real Winter Snowfall

Lviv, Ukraine has received its first real snowfall of the Winter season.

On the left, in the picture, is one of the entrances to Lviv's 14th Century Armenian Cathedral Complex.

Unlike its sister UNESCO World Heritage Site, Krakow, Poland, where the Jewish European population of the City was forced to live outside the Royal City's Walls, in a separate walled "suburb" (Kazimierz); in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Leopolis/Lemberg/Lwow/Lvov/Lviv, the various European ethnic and cultural groups and religious faiths (Armenians, Russians, Jews, Serbians, Poles, Greeks, Scots) lived side-by-side on their own separate, but interdependent, streets and communities.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Citation:

Brief Description

The city of L'viv, founded in the late Middle Ages [1256], was a flourishing administrative, religious and commercial centre for several centuries. The medieval urban topography has been preserved virtually intact (in particular, there is evidence of the different ethnic communities who lived there), along with many fine Baroque and later buildings.

Justification for Inscription

Criterion ii: In its urban fabric and its architecture, L’viv is an outstanding example of the fusion of the architectural and artistic traditions of eastern Europe with those of Italy and Germany.

Criterion v: The political and commercial role of L’viv attracted to it a number of ethnic groups with different cultural and religious traditions, who established separate yet interdependent communities within the city, evidence for which is still discernible in the modern townscape.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/865

Photo credit: Jagiellonian University in Krakow Centre for European Studies

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