Lviv
— — a city that keeps its coffee and its cobblestones.
Not only on a wall.
“Rynok Square at the centre, the Latin Cathedral on one side, the Armenian quarter a few streets north. The Old Town came through the last century largely intact, which is rare in this part of Europe. Coffee houses that have been pouring since before most modern countries existed. The trams still rattle the cobbles. The sound carries all the way to the cemetery on the hill.
Lviv, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lviv sits in western Ukraine, about seventy kilometres east of the Polish border, founded in 1256 by Danylo of Halych and named for his son Lev. The Old Town has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1998, recognised for the layering of Polish, Austrian, Armenian, Jewish and Ruthenian quarters around the central Rynok Square. The population sits near seven hundred and twenty thousand. The city escaped the worst of Second World War destruction, leaving a Renaissance and Baroque core almost unchanged from the eighteenth century.
Rynok Square is ringed by forty-four merchant houses, each three or four storeys, each with its own facade. The Latin Cathedral on the south side of the centre dates to 1370. The Armenian Cathedral on Virmenska Street goes back to 1363, one of the oldest in Eastern Europe. The streets are cobbled in setts that predate the trams. Lychakiv Cemetery, on the eastern hill, holds the graves of Ukrainian poets, Polish defenders, and Austrian officers, each in their own quarter of stone.
The Old Town is small enough to walk in a day and rewarding enough to take a week. Tram lines one, two, and six thread the centre. Coffee houses cluster around Rynok Square; the legend of Lviv coffee runs back to 1606 and to Yuriy Kulchytsky, who is credited with carrying the practice west to Vienna. Lychakiv Cemetery is open during daylight hours. The High Castle hill rises four hundred and thirteen metres above the city and gives the only full view of the red roofs below.