From Countryside to City: The Evolution of Ukrainian Urban Folk Fashion in Galicia

Ukraine boasts an ancient and rich tradition of embroidery. Folk embroidery was deeply symbolic and connected with a great number of beliefs, myths, and superstitions. At the heart of this tradition was the shirt, known as the vyshyta sorochka or vyshyvanka. For centuries, Ukrainian embroidery was confined to the rural […]

The Halychyna Town Costume: Modern Folk Attire for Galician Urban Folk

Following the dissolution of the Austrian Empire at the end of World War I, Galicia became a part of Poland, which exerted pressure on Ukrainian cultural identity. In response, a wave of Ukrainian national consciousness emerged among the middle class and urban populations. While desiring to express their Ukrainian heritage, […]

Lederer & Popper Photomontage Postcards of Galicia and Beyond

I love looking at old photographs of Galician cities and towns, especially postcards with city views. A real treat among these are photomontages — postcard collages. I first came across montage postcards depicting Lviv and was particularly struck by the one with a woman who had fallen from her bicycle. […]

A Look at 1920s Galicia: Photographs of Daily Life in the Countryside

Below is a collection of photographs that depict daily life in the Galician countryside in the 1920s. The photographs were found on eBay by German collector Wolfgang Wiggers, who subsequently published them on his Flickr page. At the time the photographs were taken, Galicia was part of interwar Poland. All […]

Kosiv: Former Center of Natural Medicine and Vegetarianism

Back during Austrian times and up until World War II, the Carpathian Hutsul town of Kosiv (formerly Kosów) was a center of natural medicine and vegetarianism. This is thanks to Dr. Apolinary Tarnawski (1851-1943), a Polish physician who at the end of the nineteenth century founded a private sanatorium in […]

Photographs of Prewar Lviv: Ukrainian Signage

In Lviv, according to the Austrian census of 1910, 51% of the city’s population was Polish Roman Catholic, 28% Jewish, and 19% Ukrainian Greek Catholic. Linguistically, 86% of the city’s population used the Polish language while 11% used Ukrainian (Lviv). Looking at these statistics, it’s no surprise that the Ukrainian language was […]

Galicia’s Sokolnie: The Architectural Heritage of the Polish Sokół Society

The former buildings of the Sokół Polish Gymnastic Society stand today in the center of almost every Galician town on both sides of the Polish-Ukrainian border. Serving as sports and cultural centers, these were once significant buildings in the town space and often outstanding architectural masterpieces. Although today few of […]

Lviv’s First Tram Depot

The first electric tramline in Lviv was built ahead of the General Regional Exhibition of 1894 to bring visitors from the main railway station to the site of the exhibition. To power the line, the first municipal electric station of direct current (DC) was also built, and to house the […]

Austrian Military Barracks in Lviv – Part II

From the End of Nineteenth Century to WWI When Galicia came under the rule of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1772, no specially built barracks or barracks complexes existed in Lviv. At first, the Austrian military used the premises of Lviv’s monasteries for magazines (ammunition storehouses) and barracks (Ger: Kaserne/Caserne; Polish: koszary; Ukr: касарні, казарми, кошари). […]

Dom Inwalidów: Where Disabled Military Veterans Retired in Lviv

The Romantic historicist ensemble of the former Dom Inwalidów / K. K. Invalidenhaus (Invalids’ House) is a valuable monument of architecture and history. An initiative of the emperor of the Austrian Empire, the Dom Inwalidów was a retirement home for disabled military veterans in Lwów / Lemberg from 1863 to […]