Today, May 18, International Museum Day is celebrated in Ukraine. Lviv guide Oleksandra Diabina talks about which museums are worth visiting in Lviv.

Museums are a whole world. Endless and incomprehensible. They, like people, can be very different. There are literary and natural history, historical and sacred, musical and medical, technical and automotive museums. Museums are so important that a separate day, May 18, is dedicated to them, when we celebrate International Museum Day. A whole year of preparation, planning, free visits, curatorial tours, some even organize a night at the museum, performances, installations, and everything that a museum worker's creative nature can imagine. Lviv is no exception, but an example of museum innovation and a modern approach to a difficult task.

Lviv hosts Ukraine's largest and most interesting Arms Museum "Arsenal" (5 Pidvalna Street) and the "Retro-Museum" Automobile Technology Museum (57a Dmytro Vitovskyi Street), the Natural History Museum (18 Teatralna Street), and the Museum of Science (7 Sichovykh Striltsiv Street). Everyone will find something new and interesting for themselves.

Museum of Science in Lviv. See the photo report here

Lviv Art Gallery (3 Stefanyk Street), National Museum of Andrey Sheptytsky (20 Svobody Avenue), Museum of Ethnography (15 Svobody Avenue), Lviv Historical Museum (6 Rynok Square), and this list is almost endless.

How in Lviv restored Lozynsky Palace – home of the Lviv Art Gallery

Large museums have several locations, many exhibitions, and are always ready to surprise us. Museum staff try to keep up with the times and come up with various interesting excursions, quests for children and adults, and even incorporate the latest technologies.

Lviv museums are a separate world! Few Lviv residents dive into this parallel reality. Some consider it uninteresting, recalling forced school trips, some don't find time, some postpone it for tomorrow, which never comes... But if you are lucky and dive into this world, I guarantee you won't stop. I recommend diving with museum staff. Be sure to book an excursion – this is an important moment in perceiving information from what you see. Visiting a museum without a guide is like eating borscht with raw vegetables and no spices; it might be healthy, but it's not tasty. Here you need to taste, enjoy, savor. Let it be rare, but let it be good.

You can visit the pharmacy-museum yourself – see medicines, solutions, inventory, but the guide's stories will captivate you with information, legends, inventions, you will dive into the world of alchemy and the search for the philosopher's stone along with Count Cagliostro, and this emotion will stay with you forever. And what about paintings, art, icons, sculptures, glass, jewelry, clothing, historical finds, old prints, fabrics, books, weapons...

Museums of houses of famous Lviv residents occupy a special place in Lviv: the house-museum of Ivan Franko (150-152 Ivan Franko Street), Mykhailo Hrushevsky (154 Ivan Franko Street), Solomiya Krushelnytska (23 Solomiya Krushelnytska Street), Olena Kulchytska (7 Vystochnoho Chynu Street), Oleksa Novakivsky (11 Vystochnoho Chynu Street), Teodosia Bryzh (5 Martovych Street). This is a complete immersion in the atmosphere, interior, a real teleportation in space and time, incredible impressions from what you see.

Franko House in Lviv

And also the Ethnographic Museum is worth it, where you feel like Cinderella who has arrived at a ball right at the entrance. A carriage at the entrance, which, according to a Lviv legend, turns back into a large pumpkin at night. And then – a ball in royal chambers with dishes, furniture, outfits, tapestries, musical instruments, and everything that the history of Lviv has left us as a legacy.

In the Museum of Ethnography and Crafts of the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, located at 15 Svobody Avenue, the carriage of Lviv archbishops of the 18th century is being restored.

A separate dimension of museum Lviv is the Lviv underground. Here, like in a time machine, you enter the real Middle Ages and lose your sense of reality.

And the Lviv collection of the Museum of Anatomy at the Medical University (2 Pekarska Street) is worth it – no worse than the Bologna Anatomical Theatre. The Psenzyl Museum (2a Lychakivska Street), Bandinelli Palace (Bandinelli House, Rynok Square), Royal Chambers in the Korniakt House in ensemble with the Italian Courtyard (6 Rynok Square) impress with their exhibitions.

Lviv also has the Museum of Beer History – Lvivarnya (18 Kleparivska St.), the Museum of a Single Book, but what a book – "Dnister Mermaid" (40 Mykola Kopernyk St.), the Museum of Embroidered Icons by Dmytro Blazheyivskyi (26 Teatralna St.), the Museum of the History of Lviv Railways (54/56 Fedkovych St.), the "Prison on Lontskoho" Museum (1 Stepan Bandera St.), the "On the Traces of Galician Jews" Museum (3 Ivan Kotliarevsky St.), the "Territory of Terror" Museum (45g Viacheslav Chornovil Ave.), the Museum of the Liberation Struggle of Ukraine, located in the famous Kurkove Society at 23A Lysenka St.

The "Dnister Mermaid" Museum in Lviv. How this space will change, see here

A special place should be given to the open-air museum "Shevchenkivskyi Hai" (1 Chernecha Hora Street) – this is living history under the open sky, a recreation for body and soul.

And I also cannot fail to mention Lviv's novelty – the newly created Museum of Modernism (15A Mykola Kopernyk Street), which opened near the Potocki Palace.

Museum of Modernism. See the photo report here

Lviv residents are lucky to live in a city with many museums for every taste and preference. Wise people say that our environment shapes us. We have the best city, which impresses with its external beauty – these are houses, churches, stone buildings, but also think that Lviv has its own inner beauty, which is not visible at first glance – these are its museums. You need to decide to see this beauty, buy a ticket, book an excursion or a quest and enjoy the inner existence of Lviv with pleasure. And not only on May 18, but as often as possible.

Photo: Tvoe Misto

The author's column reflects the subjective position of the author. The editorial board of "Tvoe Misto" does not always share the opinions expressed in the columns and is ready to provide dissenting opinions with the opportunity for a reasoned response.