The picture shows the southern wall of the ancient City Arsenal, located at 5 Pidvalna Street. The Arsenal was built in 1554-1556 under the leadership of the builder, Ivan Lys, on the site of an ancient building that had existed since 1430. The building received its current appearance after a fire and reconstruction in 1574-1575. The Arsenal is a three-story, rectangular building 53 m long, with a truncated southwest corner. The City Arsenal was attached to a high wall. Its ends were closed by defensive towers; on the south side – the Shoemaker's Tower (it has not survived to this day) on the north side – the octagonal Tower of the Ropemakers and Turners, which has been partially preserved to this day. In 1799, during the reconstruction of the arsenal building, the southern wall was a stone slab with relief coats of arms of Lviv and the Sobieski and Jablonowski families – in memory of the restoration of the fortifications of the second half of the 17th century. Previously, it was located on the city defensive wall, and in 1973, during restoration work, the slab was dismantled and built into the wall of the Church of St. Michael of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites (now the Church of St. Michael) on Vynnychenko Street, where it was planned to create the Museum of Lviv Sculpture. Instead, a “new addition” was added to the end wall of the arsenal – an imitation of the Shevskaya Tower with a fragment of the defensive wall.

Oleh Vvedenskyi