The picture shows a square on Lenin Avenue (now Svobody Avenue), located between I. Pidkovy Square and the Lviv Hotel. Now the hotel has returned its original name: "Grand Hotel", which has existed since 1893. In the early 1960s, when a new hotel was built on 700-richchia Lviv Street and named "Lviv", the hotel on Lenin Avenue was named "Verkhovyna". Throughout the 20th century, the square, which was part of the Hetman Ramparts, was extremely popular with Lviv residents and guests and tourists visiting Lviv. In 1898, an equestrian monument to King Jan III Sobieski (sculptor Tadeusz Baroncz) was erected in the center of the square on the occasion of the 215th anniversary of the victorious Battle of Vienna. On March 7, 1950, the monument was dismantled and transported to Poland. In the midst of a large flower beds, on the site of the monument, the main Christmas tree of the city was always put up before the New Year, and every summer the Green Economy Trust built decorative vases - intricate compositions made of different varieties of flowers. All this created an occasion for a "photo for remembrance". In the background - the building of the Opera House and the monument to V. Lenin erected in 1952. On the left we see the first Lviv trolleybus - on November 27, 1952, the trolleybus route Railway Station-Lenin Ave.-Mitskevych Square was opened, which operated until September 1, 1971. In the early 1950s, the square became the venue for the first city book markets, the traditions of which have been continued in our time by the Publishers' Forum in Lviv.

Oleh Vvedenskyi