Must-see attractions in Western Ukraine

  • Artifical flowers decorating small winged angel statue on grave at Lychakivske Cemetery.

    Lychakivsky Cemetery

    Lviv

    Don't leave town until you've seen this amazing 42-hectare cemetery, only a short ride on tram 7 from the centre. This is the Père Lachaise of Eastern…

  • A cell in the Museum of Political Prisoners in Ternopil.

    Museum of Political Prisoners

    Western Ukraine

    A block back from bul Shevchenka, this former KGB prison is where several prominent members of UPA and OUN were held, tortured and shot in the years of…

  • Ploshcha Rynok (Market Square) with historic buildings Black Mansion and Dominican Cathedral in background.

    Ploshcha Rynok

    Lviv

    Lviv was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1998, and this old market square lies at its heart. The square was progressively rebuilt after a major…

  • Lvivarnya

    Lviv

    Revamped in 2017, the museum belonging to Lviv's brewery is an impressive, modern experience, a world away for the rickety post-Soviet repositories of the…

  • High Castle Hill

    Lviv

    Around a 2km walk from pl Rynok, visiting the High Castle (Vysoky Zamok) on Castle Hill (Zamkova Hora) is a quintessential Lviv experience. There’s little…

  • Lviv History Museum – Rynok 24

    Lviv

    This branch of the Lviv History Museum expounds on the city's very early days starting with early cultures that inhabited Galicia and ending with the…

  • Ratusha

    Lviv

    The city fathers have occupied this location since the 14th century, but the present-day Italianate look dates to 1835. In a sign of openness and…

  • Apteka Museum

    Lviv

    This fascinating pharmacy museum is located inside a still-functioning chemist's shop dating from 1735. Buy a ticket from the pharmacist and head down…

  • Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra, a monastery in Pochayiv, Ukraine.

    Pochayiv Monastery

    Western Ukraine

    Its ornate golden domes rising up from the surrounding plain, Pochayiv Monastery is a beacon of Ukrainian Orthodoxy (Moscow Patriarchate) on the edge of a…

  • Ternopil Lake in Ukraine.

    Ternopil Lake

    Western Ukraine

    Summer in Ternopil is all about the town's lake, actually a reservoir that started life as part of a defence system for the now all-but-defunct castle…

  • Prospekt Svobody

    Lviv

    In summer the broad pavement in the middle of this wide prospekt is the town's main hang-out and a hub of Lviv life, where homegrown tourists pose for…

  • Latin Cathedral

    Lviv

    With various chunks dating from between 1370 and 1480, this working cathedral is one of Lviv’s most impressive churches. The exterior is most definitely…

  • Museum of Folk Architecture and Life

    Lviv

    This open-air museum displays different regional styles of farmsteads, windmills, churches and schools, which dot a huge park to the east of the city…

  • Boyim Chapel

    Lviv

    The blackened facade of the burial chapel (1615), belonging to Hungarian merchant Georgi Boyim and his family, is covered in magnificent if somewhat…

  • Dominican Cathedral

    Lviv

    Dominating a square to the east of pl Rynok is one of Lviv’s signature sights, the large dome of the 1764 Dominican Cathedral. Inside, the typical baroque…

  • Armenian Cathedral

    Lviv

    One church you should not miss is the elegant 1363 Armenian Cathedral with its ancient-feeling interior. The placid cathedral courtyard is a maze of…

  • Assumption Church

    Lviv

    This Ukrainian Orthodox church is easily distinguished by the 65m-high, triple-tiered Kornyakt bell tower rising beside it. The tower was named after its…

  • Jesuit Church

    Lviv

    Only reconsecrated in 2011, Lviv's impressive Jesuit church (full name – Garrison Church of Sts Peter and Paul) was used as a book repository during the…

  • Bernardine Church and Monastery

    Lviv

    Lviv's most stunning baroque interior belongs to the 17th-century now Greek Catholic Church of St Andrew, part of the Bernadine Monastery. Populated with…

  • Museum of Ethnography, Arts & Crafts

    Lviv

    This underfunded, chaotically curated museum has a few interesting pieces of furniture, Czech glass, art nouveau posters (Mucha, Lautrec) and various 19th…

  • Transfiguration Church

    Lviv

    The tall copper-domed church just west of the Armenian Cathedral is the late-17th-century, newly renovated Transfiguration Church, the first church in the…

  • Golden Rose Synagogue

    Lviv

    The late-16th-century Golden Rose Synagogue stood at the heart of the inner district before the Nazis blew it up in 1943. A piece of wasteland for decades…

  • St Nicholas Church

    Lviv

    Darkly mysterious and wonderfully aromatic, this is possibly Lviv's finest church away from the tourist action. It dates back to at least 1292 and is now…

  • Statue of Taras Shevchenko

    Lviv

    An enormous statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's greatest nationalist writer, rises up in the middle of pr Svobody. It was a gift to the people of Lviv…

  • Monument to the Victims of Soviet Crimes

    Lviv

    This grim but striking monument depicts a brutalist, angular figure breaking out from iron prison bars, with cobbles radiating out to benches around where…

  • Shatsky National Nature Park

    Western Ukraine

    The Shatsky National Nature Park lies 160km northwest of Lutsk in the corner between Belarus and Poland, and has some 200 lakes, rivers and streams…

  • Pyatnystke Cemetery

    Western Ukraine

    Some 100 or so of the Cossacks who died in the skirmishes during the Khmelnytsky uprising against Poland in 1648 are buried in the remarkable Pyatnytske…

  • Lutsk Castle

    Western Ukraine

    Lutsk's 14th-century castle stands surrounded by ornate 17th-century churches and homes and is in fairly decent shape for a Ukrainian fortress. Known as…

  • Trinity Church

    Western Ukraine

    The main Orthodox church in Lutsk dates from 1752 and is a much more atmospheric affair than the Sts Peter's and Paul's Cathedral, not having been…

  • Dominican Church

    Western Ukraine

    At the western end of vul Hetmana Sahaydachnoho, where it opens up into maydan Voli, the dirty-cream-and-grey Dominican Church and monastery complex…

  • Castle

    Western Ukraine

    Dubno castle is where Andry, the son of Cossack Taras Bulba, falls in love with a Polish princess in Gogol's famous story, Taras Bulba, and crosses over…

  • Bul Tarasa Shevchenka

    Western Ukraine

    The town's verdant showpiece, complete with landscaping, fountains and mature trees, is a popular hang-out and a pleasant spot for an evening corso…

  • Kremenets Fortress

    Western Ukraine

    The remains of this hilltop fortress are easily breeched by individual hikers and day trippers. Dating from at least the 12th century, and possibly…

  • Rizdva Khrystovoho Church

    Western Ukraine

    Ternopil's most attractive ecclesiastical interior belongs to the 17th-century Church of the Nativity. Inside this oasis of calm, the nave explodes in…

  • Facade of St. George's Cathedral in Lviv, Ukraine; Shutterstock ID 180079754; Your name (First / Last): Emma Sparks; GL account no.: 65050; Netsuite department name: Online Editorial; Full Product or Project name including edition: Best in Europe POI updates

    St George's Cathedral

    Lviv

    On the way between the city centre and the train station stands the historic and sacred centre of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, which was handed…

  • Lviv History Museum – Black House

    Lviv

    Occupying the conspicuous Black House with its seemingly sooty facade, this is possibly the least interesting of the four pl Rynok branches of Lviv's…

  • National Museum

    Lviv

    Residing in one of Lviv's grandest 19th-century palaces, this sometimes confusing museum (too many doors, ticket rippers, sections, prescribed routes) has…