The historical heart of the city, with its cobblestone streets and architectural assortment of Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classicism and Art Nouveau, survived Soviet and German occupations during World War II largely unscathed.

In 1444, the city was granted the staple right, which resulted in its growing prosperity and wealth, as it became one of the major trading centres on the merchant routes between Central Europe and Black Sea region.

The city became a significant centre for Eastern Orthodoxy with the establishment of an Orthodox brotherhood, a Greek-Slavonic school, and a printer which published the first full versions of the Bible in Church Slavonic in 1580.

A Jesuit Collegium was founded in 1608, and on 20 January 1661 King John II Casimir of Poland issued a decree granting it "the honour of the academy and the title of the university".

On 1 April 1656, during a holy mass in Lviv's Cathedral conducted by the papal legate Pietro Vidoni, John Casimir in a grandiose and elaborate ceremony entrusted the Commonwealth under the Blessed Virgin Mary's protection, whom he announced as The Queen of the Polish Crown and other of his countries.

[citation needed] Two years later, John Casimir, in honor of the bravery of its residents, declared Lviv to be equal to two historic capitals of the Commonwealth, Kraków and Vilnius.

[citation needed] In the same year, 1658, Pope Alexander VII declared the city to be Semper fidelis, in recognition of its key role in defending Europe and Roman Catholicism from the Ottoman Muslim invasion.

Lviv was captured for the first time since the Middle Ages by a foreign army in 1704 when Swedish troops under King Charles XII entered the city after a short siege.

Galicia was subject to the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy, but the Galician Sejm and provincial administration, both established in Lviv, had extensive privileges and prerogatives, especially in education, culture, and local affairs.

Many Belle Époque public edifices and tenement houses were erected, with many of the buildings from the Austrian period, such as the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, built in the Viennese neo-Renaissance style.

Despite Entente mediation attempts to cease hostilities and reach a compromise between belligerents the Polish–Ukrainian War continued until July 1919 when the last UHA forces withdrew east of the River Zbruch.

The border on the River Zbruch was confirmed at the Treaty of Warsaw, when in April 1920 Field Marshal Piłsudski signed an agreement with Symon Petlura where it was agreed that in exchange for military support against the Bolsheviks the Ukrainian People's Republic renounced its claims to the territories of Eastern Galicia.

[84][85][86] The Sikorski–Mayski Agreement signed in London on 30 July 1941 between Polish government-in-exile and USSR's government invalidated the September 1939 Soviet-German partition of Poland, as the Soviets declared it null and void.

Later, in the winter and spring of 1945, the local NKVD continued to arrest and harass Poles in Lwów (which according to Soviet sources on 1 October 1944 still had a clear Polish majority of 66.7%) in an attempt to encourage their emigration from the city.

In Yalta, despite Polish objections, the Allied leaders, Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill decided that Lwów should remain within the borders of the Soviet Union.

In the treaty, Polish authorities formally ceded the prewar eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union, agreeing to the Polish-Soviet border to be drawn according to the Curzon Line.

[98] Bracing for Russian attacks, local government and citizens, helped by the Polish and Croatian advisers, worked to protect the city's cultural heritage by erecting makeshift barriers around historical monuments, wrapping statues, and safeguarding art treasures.

Currently, the Jewish population has shrunk considerably as a result of emigration (mainly to Israel and the United States) and, to a lesser degree, assimilation, and is estimated to number a few thousand.

According to the Lviv Economic Development Strategy, the main branches of the city's economy by 2025 should become tourism and information technologies (IT), the business services and logistics are also a priority.

UNESCO gave the following reasons[166] for its selection: Criterion II: In its urban fabric and its architecture, Lviv is an outstanding example of the fusion of the architectural and artistic traditions of central and eastern Europe with those of Italy and Germany.Criterion V: The political and commercial role of Lviv attracted to it a number of ethnic groups with different cultural and religious traditions, who established separate yet interdependent communities within the city, evidence for which is still discernible in the modern town's landscape.The World Heritage Site consists of Seredmistia (Middletown), Pidzamche, High Castle, and the ensemble of St. George's Cathedral.

For years the city was one of the most important cultural centres of Poland with such writers as Aleksander Fredro, Gabriela Zapolska, Leopold Staff, Maria Konopnicka and Jan Kasprowicz living in Lviv.

There are also many operas written by foreign composers, and most of these operas are performed in the original language: Othello, Aida, La Traviata, Nabucco, and A Masked Ball by G. Verdi, Tosca, La Bohème and Madame Butterfly by G. Puccini, Cavalleria Rusticana by P. Mascagni, and Pagliacci by R. Leoncavallo (in Italian); Carmen by G. Bizet (in French), The Haunted Manor by S. Moniuszko (in Polish) Museum Pharmacy "Pid Chornym Orlom" (Beneath the Black Eagle) was founded in 1735 – it is the oldest pharmacy in Lviv.

Composers such as Henryk Wars, songwriters Emanuel Szlechter and Wiktor Budzyński, the actor Mieczysław Monderer and Adolf Fleischer ("Aprikosenkranz und Untenbaum") worked in Lviv.

Under the presidency of the historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, it greatly expanded its activities, contributing to both the humanities and the physical sciences, law and medicine, but most specifically once again it was concentrated on Ukrainian studies.

Stanisław Ulam who was later a participant in the Manhattan Project and the proposer of the Teller-Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, Stefan Banach one of the founders of functional analysis, Hugo Steinhaus, Karol Borsuk, Kazimierz Kuratowski, Mark Kac and many other notable mathematicians would gather there.

[186] Due to a comprehensive cultural programme and tourism infrastructure (having more than 8,000 hotel rooms, over 1300 cafes and restaurants,[187] free WI-Fi zones in the city centre, and good connection with many countries of the world), Lviv is considered one of Ukraine's major tourist destinations.

Other prominent sites include the Latin Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary; St. George's Cathedral of the Greek-Catholic Church; the Dominican Church of Corpus Christi; Chapel of the Boim family; the Lviv High Castle (Ukrainian: Vysokyi Zamok) on a hill overlooking the centre of the city; the Union of Lublin Mound; the Lychakivskiy Cemetery where the notable people were buried; and the Svobody Prospekt which is Lviv's central street.

The tracks are narrow-gauge, unusual for the Soviet Union, but explained by the fact that the system was built while the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and needed to run in narrow medieval streets in the centre of town.

After World War II the city grew rapidly due to evacuees returning from Russia, and the Soviet Government's vigorous development of heavy industry.

On 5 November 1918, a crew consisting of Stefan Bastyr and Janusz de Beaurain carried out the first-ever flight under the Polish flag taking off from Lviv's Lewandówka (now Ukrainian: Levandivka) airport.