Medieval ads and signs have survived in and around Lviv’s Rynok Square. These are metal signs or stone carvings located above entrance ways. The emblems marked the locations of guilds, workshops, stores, taverns, etc. Signage during this era used symbols since the general populace was illiterate.
Entrances to taverns were marked with lion heads, often with a bunch of grapes in its mouth:
Grapes marked the entrances to restaurants:
Emblem of a tailor’s workshop on a building on Rynok Square:
Relief of Luke the Evangelist (Patron of painters), emblem of a painter’s workshop, located on Krakivska St.:
Workshops and stores were often marked with metal signs. An iron key marking a locksmith’s workshop from the nineteenth century still survives on a seventeenth-century building:
Other types of signs that were used but no longer found in Lviv are: a bundle of hay marking where beer was sold; a lion with a lock marking a locksmith’s workshop; a horse marking a blacksmith’s workshop; a saber marking a gunsmith’s workshop.
