The abundance and prosperity of Lviv has long been dependent on international trade. During the centuries of its existence, this Galician city was situated at the crossroads of important merchant routes. However, new modern capitalist ways of achieving economic success were largely propagated in Europe from the eighteenth century, and Lviv, for some reasons or other, appeared to be beyond these processes. When the Austrians arrived there in 1772, they found a provincial, rather decayed town, which had preserved its old traditional crafts.

     The main intrigue of this research lies in answering the following question: "How the developed modern practices and ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were realized in the context of Lviv, a great, but provincial urban center of East Central Europe?" Let us consider the issue taking as an example the informal district of Pidzamche in Lviv, which became an important center of modernization processes origin and evolution.

     Speaking of modernization, it is also important to clearly define what is subject to modernization. In the proposed project, we try to delineate spaces, so it is worthwhile to start with a conditional definition of a local traditional organic space in the area of Pidzamche at the turn of the nineteenth century before the spread of specific modern practices, objects, ideas, and senses.

     We can argue that the conditionally "traditional" social space of Pidzamche in the late eighteenth – early nineteenth centuries, before the advent of developed modern practices, was defined by a number of points, including:

— an economic specialization as most low-status and "dirty" economic businesses were gradually transferred there;
— a considerable spread of small and basic forms of trade constituting an important alternative of the downtown merchants' activities  and competing with them;
— a lack of clear norms and formalities in inter-ethnic, professional, and governmental relations (compared to the downtown);
— existence of orderly, almost "urban" housing at "near" Pidzamche – in the Jewish ghetto and in the "princely" quarters;
— a correlation with cultures considered "foreign" by the official Lviv, i.e. Jewish, Armenian, and Ruthenian;
— negative "external" (from the perspective of the downtown) stereotypes — "dirty Jews", "robbers", "social drop-outs".

     So Pidzamche appears a district which is culturally and socially marginalized, but, at the same time,  important in the economic life of the city. Unlike the downtown, hidden behind the walls, which was in a condition of significant economic decline (caused by various factors, including prolonged wars in the previous century and fading usual trade and business practices specific to the region), active economic activity — though mainly that of basic, primitive nature — never stopped in the Krakivske suburb, including Pidzamche. It certainly turned Pidzamche into Lviv's most fertile ground for the introduction of modern capitalist practices. However, the economic activity of the Krakivske suburb competed with the downtown and, superimposed on the "Jewish factor" (a large Jewish ghetto was located in this suburb), caused a rather negative and hostile attitude on the part of the "internal" town residents.

      The peculiarities of Pidzamche's "traditional" space can be considered in three main areas: 1) Jewish Pidzamche; 2) Pidzamche as a suburb specialized in trade and handicraft; 3) multicultural Pidzamche. Each aspect is analyzed in the following sections of the research and in specific research microfocuses.

A Traditional Jewish Space

One of the most significant features of Lviv quarters situated to the north of the central part is the fact that a Jewish ghetto was located there for centuries. It was the Jews who created the local color of this place's life due to their social, cultural, and domestic practices. It is their representation that formed the basis of the perception of the northern suburb on the part of the rest of Lviv residents. The actual ghetto, a territory where the suburban Jewish community lived densely, traditionally occupied an area not too large: on the east-west axis, it was limited roughly by the Poltva river channel (now Chornovola prospect) and the slope of the Vysokyi Zamok (High Castle) Hill, while on the south-north axis it was limited by the city walls (now vul. Torhova and vul. Ivana Honty) and Pl. Sv. Teodora (St. Theodore Square). However, with the development of the Jewish community and the liberalization of the city norms and customs after the Austrian rule was established, the Jews settled around the traditional ghetto on a mass scale too, mixing with Polish and Ukrainian population and playing an important role there as well. Thus, in the nineteenth century, the Jews occupied an important segment of the local area in both "closer" and "further" Pidzamche.

     The massive influx of the Jews to the city started in the first decades of the fifteenth century. The rich and powerful (but not everyone who wished) could expect a place in the ghetto within the city walls, while others settled in the northern neighborhoods outside the walls. The so-called "starosta's jurydyka" (a jurydyka was a settlement right outside or, less commonly, an enclave within a royal city, that was independent from the municipal laws and rulers but instead remained under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastic or secular lord who owned it) functioned on the area between the Vysokyi Zamok Hill and the Poltva river, so these territories were subjects to the starosta (senior) of the castle. The management on behalf of the starosta was carried out by a burgrave; that is why the land under the castle jurisdiction was also called a burgraviate. As Majer Bałaban, a well-known researcher of the Lviv Jews, observed, "for the Jews, the starosta rule was more advantageous than that of the city as it did not impede buying and building houses as well as engaging in trade, handicrafts and so on. This liberty of buying and selling houses was determined by an old royal privilege, approved by Zygmunt August on 1 October 1568, and by the Lviv starostas' privileges. (...) Unlike the conditions in the city, there was full freedom of settlement in the suburbs at that time. The Jews had to pay duties only "to the castle", but always "on an equal basis with others" (Bałaban, 1909, 88-89).

     Bałaban saw reasons for special "free settlement" in "closer" Pidzamche in the fact that this district was also home to many antisocial and dangerous men like robbers, thieves, horse thieves and so on. Today, it is difficult to verify the truthfullness of these conclusions. Perhaps, it would be more correct to assume that life "outside the walls" was exhausting and dangerous and urged local residents to resort to dubious ways of earning their living. These conclusions allow us to understand how the "city" residents treated those who lived in the northern neighborhoods. Outsiders saw this territory as a dangerous, uncivilized place where formidable criminals could find shelter. Bałaban mentioned the names of the most famous Jewish robbers: Dawid Konfederat, Awraam Dankowicz, Heszel Juszko. Pidzamche fell into disrepute for a long time, and the ill fame even came, in a modified form, till our time, becoming an important element of symbolic and imaginary typification of the Pidzamche space.

     Lviv residents saw Pidzamche as a problem as early as in seventeenth century. What worried the city residents most of all was the use of suburban buildings by enemy troops during city sieges (enemies usually attacked on an open plain between the Vysokyi Zamok and Kortumova hills which was a weak spot in Lviv's vicinities) and frequent fires in the suburban wooden housing, which often went over to the city. Finally, the city council decided to regulate the northern neighborhoods according to their vision. Fortunately for Pidzamche residents, the members of the Lviv city council failed to implement all their plans since the burgraviate of Pidzamche was outside their jurisdiction. The only area that they had the right to control were plots directly adjacent to the city walls. In 1624 a contract was concluded between the city and the suburb, according to which the residents were forbidden to erect buildings closer than "four hundred cubits from the walls" (Schnür-Pepłowski, 1896, 11), while they were provided with more distant plots free of charge. Consequently, the ghetto area shifted slightly to the north, leaving a free space between the buildings and the city walls. The residents of the northern neighborhoods were also given permission to build a new synagogue on the place of the so-called "court of Poznan" and a new street between the Poltva and the Benedictine monastery (Bałaban, 1909, 93).

     So the Jewish quarter got the spatial layout which can be seen today. The Krakowska square was formed between the walls and the ghetto, and housing extended farther, with the Great Suburban Synagogue ("Vorstater Schul"), built at the same time, in 1624-1630, in about the center. Whole vul. Sianska (former Bozhnycha), occupied by synagogues and prayer houses, became a center of religious life later. Among the sacral buildings, the main ones were the Small Suburban Synagogue "Beth Midrash" (House of Wisdom), the "Hasidim Schul" or "Beth Hasidim" synagogue (the first of the known Hasidic temples, the so-called "kloyz"), the Great Beit Midrash of the suburb. All of them were built in the late eighteenth century. Unfortunately, however, they did not survive the German occupation. An important place of Jewish life in the ghetto was also a ritual bathhouse "mikvah," located on vul. Lazneva, 5 (the building does not exist today). In "further" Pidzamche, the oldest synagogue is considered the "Korite Schul," built in 1854; it belonged to the "Gomel Hesed" society (vul. Khmelnytskoho, 109) and was destroyed in 1941 too.

     An important place of Jewish Pidzamche was the Krakivskyi (Krakowski) market, which owes its name to the proximity to the Krakivska gate. For several centuries of its existence, the market grew so much that in the first half of the twentieth century it covered almost all of the "old" Jewish ghetto. Jewish residents usually engaged in trade and small handicraft businesses, so it was the Krakivskyi market or "Krakidały," as it was popularly called, that most of Pidzamche residents profited from.

A Suburban Space

In the nineteenth century quarters located to the north of the city center were officially attached to the city as the Zhovkivske suburb. It was only natural, however, that this area long retained its suburban character, different from the actual city "within the walls." Till the end of the nineteenth century, low wooden buildings were predominant there; there were many semi-rural estates with orchards and vegetable gardens in this area. During the colonization of Lviv's outskirts in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries, separate estates and farms were founded around the city and gradually surrounded by apiaries, fields, wineries, mills. Some estates grew and turned into full-fledged villages like Zamarstyniv, Velyke Holosko, Kulparkiv.

     The northern and southern outskirts of Lviv, i.e. Halytske and Krakivske suburbs, were the most populated and built up ones. This was considerably favored by the branched channel of the Poltva and its tributaries which flowed along the north-south axis, sandwiched between big hills on the east and on the west. The system of streams played an important role in the economic life of the city as a source of energy for mills and a means to get rid of dirt and sewage. The Halytske suburb had a superiority in the number of mills due to its hilly terrain where many rapid and powerful streams flowed into the Poltva. In the Krakivske suburb the Poltva's current was quieter, but wider, thus attracting millers. It was specially for mills that as early as the "princely" times some engineering works were carried out to regulate the flow in the area of what is now ​​the intersection of prosp. Chornovola and vul. Khimichna. In the fourteenth century it was mentioned in the city documents that there was a mill called "The Village Corner" there, which, according to a legend, belonged to Prince Leo, and a mill owned by the church of the Virgin Mary and located on the border of Zamarstyniv and Zboyishcha (Mohytych, 2011). Right opposite the Krakivska gate, according to historians, one of the oldest mills in Lviv, Zymnovodsky, was situated, which had a monopoly on milling alcoholic malt (Kis, 1968, 162).

     Numerous tanneries were built near creeks and streams at the Krakivske and Halytske suburbs. Running water was also what butchers needed. The main Lviv slaughter house was located on the Poltva near the Krakivska gate (now the Rizni square).

     In the Middle Ages the residents of the suburbs were mainly involved in unpretentious and second-rate crafts. Gradually, however, the suburban craftsmanship diversified and even duplicated the city professions, with the only difference being that it existed outside official guilds.

      In the mid-eighteenth century the appearance of Lviv suburbs changed. There was a division into an elite southern area and a working northern area. The gradual concentration of power in the hands of the nobility and clergy led to the situation when a significant part of the suburban lands was turned over to noble and monastic estates, residences, gardens, and orchards. Magnates were most attracted by fine comfortable territories in the south and in the east, in the vicinities of vul. Zelena and vul. Lychakivska (Фелонюк, 2009, 16).

      Rich and influential people, who wanted to invest money in crafts or trade in Lviv, were forced to abandon cooperation with official city merchants and craftsmen's guilds, because the latter still practiced the old "feudal" rules of work. The then "investors'"attention was more and more attracted by the northern neighbourhoods outside the city walls, not prestigious for the construction of manors, but having enough free artisans, the so-called bunglers (pol. partacze), not bound with "guild" restrictions. The confrontation between the guilds members and bunglers lasted for a long time, and in the eighteenth century it was the suburban bunglers that were more attuned to the needs of modern times (Історія Львова, 1956, 50). Early modern economic and production practices took deeper roots in the Krakivske suburb also because of a long history of juridical independence from the city fitting into the format of clear and well-defined jurisdictions proper to castles, nobility, and clergy. The craftsmen, formally subordinated to the burgrave, had to belong to the guilds too, but to implement this dependence in practice was often impossible, particularly due to the informal tolerant position of the castle authorities. So the Pidzamche craftmen's workshops were completely free from the influence of the city guilds, as it was case in jurydykas belonging to the nobility or clergy. Therefore, the number of workshops and markets was growing while in other areas it was decreasing. So the well-known tanneries of the Halytske suburb vanished. The Halytskyi market decayed almost completely while the market, situated near the Krakivska gate, continued to expand.

      The gradual process of the Krakivske suburb's craft specialization in the time, when mainly luxury mansions, gardens, palaces, and parks appeared in other places around the city, may also be explained by a geographical factor. This refers to the fact that the Poltva flows from the south to the north. The use of the river as a channel helping to get rid of waste and sewage resulted in the transfer of main production facilities to the north, that is, to the place where the Poltva left the city. In this way the people of the city managed to protect themselves from dirt.

      The northern suburb was a good place for the implementation of early capitalistic practices in the field of trade. This situation was possible due to the intermediate position of the suburb between the city and the countryside, as well as due to the trade practices of local Jewish merchants and small traders, developed under the protection of the jurydykas, independent from the city, on the basis of patterns alternative to to the urban ones. The market place near the Krakivska gate expanded more and more and merged with the surrounding quarters into a huge commercial complex, divided into specialized zones, as evidenced by the relevant old names of local streets, e.g. Khlibna (Pol. Chlebna, Eng. Bread), Tsybulna (Pol. Cebulna, Eng. Onion), Husiacha (Pol. Gęsia, Eng. Goose). An important part of the market body was a junk market, which occupied the Św. Teodora (St. Theodore) square after the dismantlement of the church of St. Theodore; this was reflected in the name of the adjacent street called Stara Lakhmitnytska or Old Junkman's (ul. Starotandentna, now vul. Muliarska).

     Another important traditional aspect of the northern suburbs' life was smuggling.  It was through Pidzamche that one of the most important trade routes, the Volhyn tract, went and thanks to smart Pidzamche traders various products often were brought to the city bypassing the customs barrier at the Zhovkivska checkpoint. Apart from that, it is worthwhile to mention illegal production and sale of alcoholic beverages, which was extremely widespread in this part of Lviv and broke the monopoly of the city authorities.

A very important, though not too noticeable at first element of the traditional (as of the nineteenth century) Pidzamche space was its multiculturalism. However, this multiculturalism belonged to a somewhat different model than the one that was formed within the downtown. The basic difference is found in more freedom and less hierarchy. In the area of Pidzamche representatives of different ethnic groups felt much more free in the choice of residence and profession. For example, in the medieval times there were, in general, significantly more artisans of Ukrainian origin in the suburbs than within the city walls. Despite the lack of accurate data it can be argued with high probability that there was a relatively large Ukrainian population in Pidzamche, that is, on the territory of the former "princely" city. This can be proved for at least one part of Pidzamche — the settlement around the church of St. John the Baptist, which formed a separate clerical jurydyka Svyatoivanivska (St. John's). We know that in the seventeenth century six members were appointed to the local administration of this jurydyka, two from each of the major ethnic groups present there, that is, the Poles, Armenians, and Ukrainians. At that time, it was quite an exceptional practice in Lviv (Фелонюк, 2009, 14). Already in the eighteenth century, due to assimilation processes, it was mostly Poles who were made administration members.

     In Pidzamche a lot of old Lviv Orthodox churches were concentrated. Due to the policy of the Austrian government, most of them have not survived till our time: the Ukrainian church of St. Theodore which was located on the Św. Teodora (St. Theodore) square and, according to tradition, was built as early as the "princely" times (the name of the square has been keeping the memory of the church for more than two centuries after it was dismantled by the Austrian authorities in 1783); the still older Armenian church of the Holy Spirit on the spot where the Zamarstynivska prison building stands now (vul. Zamarstynivska, 9); the Armenian church of St. Anne with a monastery (the area in front of the underground passage of the railway line at the beginning of vul. Bohdana Khmelnytskoho); the Ukrainian church of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (the beginning of vul. Haidamatska); the Ukrainian church of the Nativity of the Virgin (beginning of vul. Donetska). Among those which escaped destruction, there are the church of St. Nicholas, the monastery of St. Onuphrius, the church of St. Paraskeva.

     According to some interwar Lviv historians, in old Lviv a separate Armenian "town" was located in the territory of "further" Pidzamche. "Where the Zhovkva road turns to the north near the Zamkova (Castle) Hill, that is, in what is now Pidzamche, the Armenians settled at the time of the Ruthenian [prince] Leo" (Kazecka, 1928, 178).