A Multicultural District

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).