Lviv Ethnography, Folk Art And Crafts Museum

The Lviv Museum of Ethnography, Folk Arts and Crafts is one of the richest ethnographical museums in Europe. It owns a collection of unique artistic depositories of decorative-applied folk art and crafts of Ukraine.

Its funds count nearly 85 thousand relics. The history of the museum begins in 1874, when the city Industrial Museum was founded in Lviv. Now, the museum has grown into a large depository of national arts and its exhibition is kept in two buildings in central Lviv.

The ongoing main exhibition is open in the main building (15, Svobody Avenue); it presents items illustrating historical lifestyle and spiritual culture of Ukrainian people: household occupations, folk artistic trades, interiors of folk dwelling of different ethnographic regions of Ukraine.

The other building of the museum contains the Furniture and Porcelain Departments (10, Rynok Square). Ukrainian and European furniture items, textile, tapestries, metal, porcelain, faience from the Renaissance to the early 20th century are exposed there. The prevailing place among ethnographic sets is taken by the collection of folk clothes. The fund is organically supplemented with enormous (over 18 thousand sets) collection of Ukrainian embroidery.

More than a hundred homespun Ukrainian carpets and East European tapestries of the 17th - early 20th c. are kept in the textiles fund of the museum. Armenian carpets of the 17-19th c. and Jewisch cult and applied textiles are also presented in the collection. The only in Ukraine set of Coptic textiles is especially unique.