Lychakiv Necropolis, Lviv
One of Europe's oldest surviving necropolises, a museum-reserve.
A city cemetery laid out in 1786, where tombstone sculpture amounts to two hundred years of European memorial art in the open air. Ivan Franko and Solomiia Krushelnytska are buried here, alongside Polish writers Maria Konopnicka and Gabriela Zapolska: the necropolis is shared by the Ukrainian and Polish memory of Lviv. It works as a museum-reserve with an entry ticket. Here too is the grave of composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk: his funeral in 1979 became an act of defiance. Here too, in 2024, Iryna Tsybukh "Cheka" was buried — a paramedic of the Hospitallers who asked to be remembered in embroidered shirts. Here too, in Field 5, lies the ethnographer Volodymyr Hnatiuk (1871–1926), scholarly secretary of the Shevchenko Scientific Society; the bust on his grave was placed in 1971.
This is a working memorial — visitors set the tone of the place. Enter only through the main entrance on Mechnykova Street, where the ticket office is.