| |
Lviv is still like a children's picture book, says Juliet Clough, despite
the modern age creeping into the rest of Ukraine
At Cafe Virmanka the Armenian proprietess read our coffee grounds: "Lots of
travel," she said; "volcanic change"; something obscure about a princess. It
sounded more like a forecast for the sleeping beauty that is Lviv.
By Juliet Clough
www.Travel.Telegraph.co.uk
The Telegraph Group, London
Thursday, October 3, 2002
|
LVIV BASICS
Well before Lviv joined the list of "new Pragues" queuing for tourist
attention (move over Krakow, Vilnius and Bratislava), friends with an eye
for architectural gems had told me that here, in the far western corner of
Ukraine, was something truly special.
We arrived in the afternoon and left our bags at The George, an Edwardian
grande dame of a hotel recovering gamely from decades as Lviv's Intourist
flagship.
In front of the sumptuous Opera House, knots of people under the chestnut
trees argued in a series of mini Speakers' Corners. Lviv is the city where
Ukrainian independence has always been most ardently fostered. One group,
all deaf, signed passionately at each other as conkers pattered into the
pool of silence surrounding them.
|
A street musician inside the Bernardine Yard in Lviv
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
On a balmy September evening, groups of elders 50- or 60-strong had gathered
to sing folk songs, their richly layered harmonies resolutely out of synch
with the nostalgia poured out by the next impromptu choir, a few yards away.
Together they serenaded an older Ukraine, the one in retreat from the disco
music belting from the nearby cafe. The middle-aged passersby who paused for
a few twirls to a pavement jazz group, fell happily somewhere between the
two.
Svobody Avenue embraced them all: the old friends playing chess on park
benches; the little girl circling solemnly on a golden pony. Families
wearing their best clothes photographed children in front of the memorial to
Taras Shevchenko, the poet of Ukrainian nationalism whose statue never lacks
flowers. Neither does the fountain of the Madonna, a spring recently rescued
from Soviet secularisation and always circled by rapt devotees.
Baffled by the prospect of five cathedrals and 160 churches to choose from,
we opted for a guided city tour, essential for anyone struggling with the
Cyrillic alphabet. Inside the magnificence of St George's, a wedding was
followed by a christening, the cake blessed along with the happy couple,
before they made way for twin babies packaged like sugared almonds in layers
of snowy frills.
We found cloistered dimness in the tiny Armenian cathedral, while at the
Dominican church, instead of the regular afternoon organ recital, we came
across a crowd dressed to the nines for some great event: mums glossy in
crocheted nylon; city bigshots in designer shades and mirror-windowed
Mercedes; excited children wearing national costume, the small girls
sporting hair ornaments like exploded meringues.
|
An elderly lady looking down from the balcony in old part of Lviv
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
Lviv's older women may cling to headscarves and slippers, but the happening
look is Essex girl circa 1980: plenty of back-combing and killer heels. It
is left to the children of the rich to look ethnic. What is going on, we
asked the student standing wedged alongside us at the back of the church. He
looked surprised: "Don't you celebrate the start of the school year?"
Block out the ponderous 19th-century City Hall, and Rynok Square has to be
one of the most exquisite assemblages of 16th- and 17th-century houses in
Central Europe. Lent harmony by a succession of tall, triple-windowed faades
and drama by their gorgeous plasterwork, the Renaissance elegance of the
whole defies its desperate need of renovation.
|
Coffee in the superb Italianate courtyard of No 6 offered one way of getting
behind the facades. So did several of the city's 27 museums and art
galleries, many of which occupy old Lviv houses. They tended to come
complete with glass cases, creaky parquet and an attendant granny,
disentangling the keys from her knitting as she pottered ahead of us to
unlock each gallery door.
|
We liked the Museum of Pharmacy, a working chemist's shop where corn
plasters and iron tonic are still doled out among the glass flagons and pill
grinders left by earlier apothecaries. A short taxi ride took us to the
outdoor Museum of Folk Architecture and Culture, a good place for a stroll.
Under the sycamores and larches, wooden vernacular buildings collected from
all over Ukraine dozed in the autumn sunshine, most of them surrounded by
thriving vegetable plots dug by the underworked staff.
|
Tourists relaxing in a popular cafe Dzyga
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
With a day to spare, and advice from the helpful Tourist Information Centre
(open Mon-Fri), we took a trip to Zhovkva, 14 miles north-west of Lviv. Laid
out in the late 16th century, following the Renaissance blueprint for the
Ideal City, Zhovkva must once have been enchanting. In the West, its moated
mini palace, arcaded market square and series of fine churches would add up
to honeypot territory.
But Ukraine has suffered too much: tossed between Poland and the Habsburgs;
fought over by Red and White Russian armies; terrorised by Stalin's
artificially engineered famine which, in the early 1930s, killed an
estimated six million people, and by both the Nazis and the Russians, whose
secret victims are still being unearthed from beneath the floors of village
churches.
The Boims Chapel in Lviv
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
Inside the Boims Chapel
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
The result for Zhovkva has been to mire the village deep in rural decay. It
is Ruritania, courtesy of Central Casting, complete with horse-drawn carts
laden with pumpkins; goats and geese wandering the village green; gypsies
picking over heaps of clothes outside the beautiful, fire-blackened
synagogue; and pre-war motorcycles, their sidecars tied on with string.
The children spilling out of their threadbare school looked blank when asked
by our young guide if they knew that they inhabited a former Sobiewski
palace. An old woman collared us with a request that Olga write a letter for
her. She herself, she cheerfully admitted, had never learnt to do more than
sign her name.
Lviv, however, is on the cusp. It has Unesco World Heritage status; it has
McDonald's. It also has a food market fringed with the poor and elderly,
pavement sellers sitting behind a single jar of pickled gherkins, a dish of
fresh walnuts, a handkerchief full of wild mushrooms.
A wooden church in Lviv Museum of Folk Archtecture and Culture
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
The interior of a Western Ukrainian traditional hut in Lviv Museum of Folk Archtecture and Culture
ArtUkraine.com Photo
|
While you might not come for gourmet thrills (unless you have a thing about
dumplings), Viennese coffee shops, top-quality vodka and Crimean sparkling
wine all helped fuel a memorable weekend. Lviv is a snip. We payed about £12
for dinner for two; less than 50p for Turkish coffee and homemade cake. A
mere £4.50 each secured a gilded box at the Opera to see Die Fledermaus.
At Cafe Virmanka the Armenian proprietess read our coffee grounds: "Lots of
travel," she said; "volcanic change"; something obscure about a princess. It
sounded more like a forecast for the sleeping beauty that is Lviv.
For personal and academic use only.
www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=%2Ftravel%2F2002%2F10%2F02%2Fetlvi
v29.xml
| |
back
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
