Ferrum-Lwów Machine Factory and Iron and Metal Foundry was part of a large company that had factories in several cities including Łódź, Poznań, Kraków, and Sosnowiec near Katowice. In Lviv, the factory was located in the Pidzamche neighborhood and in addition to various iron and metal works such as manhole covers and […]
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The beautiful Lychakiv Cemetery greets visitors with its winding paths adorned by exquisite artistic statues and grave vaults, evoking a nostalgic journey through time. However, amidst its splendor, one can’t help but notice the destroyed headstones and vaults. This made me wonder why so much damage can be found in […]
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 […]
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. […]
Servus! This article is about a Galician tradition that can be found on both sides of the current Polish-Ukrainian border. It is about the word “servus,” a salutation typically used as a greeting, which gained popularity during the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and which became common across its entire territory. While […]
Shortly before the full-scale war started, I was working on an article about fire insurance companies that worked in Lviv (Lwów / Lemberg) in Austrian times. Thanks to this, I had learned about the Kraków Mutual Insurance Society and knew that their former headquarters still stood in Kraków. Thus some […]
I started working on this article in February 2022, shortly before the war started and before I ended up in Kraków for several months. *** Every day I walk to work across Lviv’s Old Town, passing Rynok Square right in front of the city hall building, down Ruska Street, then […]
Kraków has become my temporary wartime home. When Russia began it full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, I made the difficult decision to leave my home in Lviv and depart for Poland. I didn’t know how long I would be gone or where I would end up; but […]
“Ked’ my pryshla karta” (Кедь ми прийшла карта) is a folk ballad from the Lemko region (Lemkovyna or Lemkivshchyna), a mountainous territory that stretches along the present-day borders of Ukraine, Poland, and Slovakia. The area that today belongs to Poland and Ukraine was a part of Galicia until WWI, while […]
By Mariana Baidak for Lokalna Istoriya (original in Ukrainian) “Out of my love for Ukraine, I took a rifle and went to the field to beat the enemy with physical force,” said Olena Stepaniv, the most famous Ukrainian military woman, more than 100 years ago. Since then, the issue of […]
By Oleksandr Simchuk for Amnesia Master tilemaker Oleksa Bakhmatiuk (1820-1882) is the most famous representative of the Kosiv school of ceramics and perhaps the most successful Ukrainian artist of the nineteenth century. A lion playing with a wheel, a bear on the flute warming up a violinist, street artists dancing […]
