Lychakiv

Most picturesque area of the city is Lychakiv - the only one that officially still retained its old name. The area was settled as a suburb since the 15th century, when merchant caravans walked along this way, which called Hlynyanska, to Kafa and Constantinople. The Lychakiv name comes from the late 16th century and is distorted German word - Luisenhof, which means court of Luisen - German colonists who settled here a few centuries ago. Another theory, less likely, determines Lychakiv name from the word "lychaky" - poor people who wore bast shoes (woven of straw).

In the 17th century, there were continuous thickets. The chronicle says that in 1674 a wolf suddenly appeared around the tent of King Jan Sobieski the Third, and bitten a guard to death.

The main decorations of Lychakiv were beautiful gardens, and especially vineyards, planted on hills facing the south, along the entire street. That time local climate was warmer and Lviv produced hundreds of barrels of its own wine per year. Sometimes smart merchants cheated saying that this wine was brought from Crete or Spain, but in real it was made in Lviv.

Northern part of Lychakiv was called Lonshanivka. It was established in the 18th century by gentry-bourgeois family of French origin Lonshan (Longshamp) de Ber'ye who settled and lived in Lviv till the Second World War. The last representative of the family, Roman Lonshan de Ber'ye, professor of law, was shot along with other scientists in Lviv  on July, 4 1941 by the German Nazis.

In 1780, one of the greatest Austrian Emperor Joseph II visited Lonshanivka and was delighted with the scenic beauty of these places. It was even told that Emperor hunted here. In memory of this a master of the estate has put a statue of Minerva with the inscription, which was destroyed about a hundred years ago, on a place around the paved path that leads to the Shevchenko Grove (Shevchenkivskyi Hai). Since then, these hills became known as Kaiserwald, which means "Royal Forest" in German.  Prior to 1915 there was a beautiful forest that was cut down and ploughed in during the First World War. Later the area was covered by houses with gardens and orchards. In Soviet times Kaiserwald was renamed as Shevchenkivskyi Hai, and at the time of independent Ukraine its lower part is called Znesinnia landscape park.