[2] The unique monument of history, archeology, architecture, and nature is situated amidst the woods of Pidhorodtsi Forestry and is part of the Tustan Site Museum.

Tustan was a defence and administrative center as well as a customs site on the important salt route leading from Drohobych through Transcarpathia to Western Europe.

[3][4] The rock complex of Tustan is composed of eroded remnants of sub-vertically incident sandstone layers of the Yamna formation of the Palaeogene.

During the Mesozoic and the Paleocene Epoch of the Cenozoic, during the time of the then-existing Tethys ocean, thick layers of silt accumulated here.

About 25 million years ago, in the Paleocene Epoch of the Cenozoic, along with the formation of the Carpathian Mountains, sandstones were formed, some of which rose to the surface.

For example, these are the names of Ants chieftains and Byzantine military leaders of Slavic origin: Dobrohost, Kalihost, Mezhmyr, Tatymyr, Khvalybud, etc.

The ancient folk etymology, recorded by the Polish historian Stanisław Sarnicki in 1585, and the modern oral tradition interpret the name as “stand here”.

It says that Władysław of Opole handed down the town of Rohatyn, the castles of Olesko and Tustan, with their hamlets, property, and all their fields and a tithe of the profit of salt mines in Drohobych and Zhydachiv to the newly formed Galicia Catholic diocese.

It says that the village of Krushelnytsia of the Tustan volost was granted to obedient servants, Ivan and Damian, and their sons with all its property: forests, pasture grounds, fields, and hayfields.

The king, at the request of Jan of Tarnów, grants to Mikolaj Blizinski and his heirs “the fortress of Tustan, that is, the rocks only in the Stryi mountains near the border with Hungary”.

The most interesting metal items are an engolpion, a ring head with an engraved image of a bird, a bronze mace, a sledge-hammer, an axe, arrowheads for a crossbow, arrowheads for a longbow, spearheads, fire strikers, spurs, bell clappers, cutters, wood chisels, needles, and book clasps.

[17] Rock surface images (petroglyphs) belong to a vast and somewhat mysterious area of monuments of ancient culture and art.

Among all Tustan petroglyphs, the researcher Mykola Bandrivskyi paid attention to a group of images shaped like a circle, a disk or schematic roundish figures.

In particular, a professor of geology Bohdan Ridush proved that those are natural reliefs of petrified sponges, which appeared in the process of sandstone weathering.

In 1971-1978, Mykhailo Rozhko, together with a group of enthusiasts, systematically measured the existing traces of the construction and made the first reconstructions of the fortress.

In 1978, a new stage in the research of Tustan began with an expedition of the Lviv Regional Organization of the Ukrainian History and Culture Protection Society.

[18] The systematic study by Mykhailo Rozhko of the Tustan rock formations allowed the researcher to carry out a spatial and volumetric reconstruction of the fortress complex of Tustan with the rock group of Kamin in the center and separate defence and guarding points on Ostryi Kamin and Mala Skelia.

The survey of similar landscape-architectural objects with traces of wooden structures located in Bubnyshche, Rozghirche, Pidkamin, and other fortified sites not far from Tustan also allowed to make conclusions about the nature of the construction and the architecture of Medieval fortifications, located in mountainous, rocky places, and to define the monument’s place in the complex of the then-defensive objects of the Eastern Carpathians.

In September 2016, it was restructured under the Lviv Oblast Council as a municipal body named “The Administration of the Tustan State Historical and Cultural Reserve”.