A Tourists' Destination Still Waiting to Happen

LVIV, Ukraine -- If Lviv were in any other country, its cobblestone streets and churches, built in a mixture of Polish baroque and Austro-Hungarian imperial styles, would pull in tourists from across Europe.


But the reality is different. Tourists generally do not come unless they have some kind of ancestral tie to Lviv, whose approximately 1 million inhabitants make it the main city in western Ukraine.


Every day, one or two bus-loads of nostalgic Poles arrive in town, looking for traces of the time before 1939 when Poland ruled the area. The problem is that the Polish tourists' visits mean little in economic terms. Most of them stay with the local Polish community and not in hotels. They don't buy souvenirs and spend almost nothing.


Occasionally, groups of Jews from various countries around the world arrive in town, the descendants of the few Jews to survive Nazi extermination camps in World War II. But their visits are too rare to register any profits.


The last category of tourists are diaspora Ukrainians, who come to visit the heartland of Ukrainian nationalism. Lviv is one of the few areas in Ukraine where the Ukrainian tongue is more commonly heard on the street than Russian. But here, too, their visits do not mean profits.


For the few who do arrive in Lviv without an ancestral draw, there are few comforts to keep them in the city. There is only one European-class hotel, the Grand, and it has only 60 rooms. The other offerings are drab run-down affairs with service to match.


Quaint cobbled streets that could be lined with open-air cafes and boutiques are instead bordered with Soviet-style shops selling shoddy goods. The town has only one Western-level restaurant, at the Grand.


"Lviv is still not at the right level for foreigners. The government has to fix everything, starting with the streets," said Luydmila Yarmola, the manager of the historic George Hotel, built in 1901 and only recently returned to its former name after almost 50 years as a dreary Soviet Intourist hotel.


Maksim Trilovsky, the head architect of the Lviv region, explained some of the difficulties the local government has in persuading tourists to come.


The government came up a plan to turn the mineral water spa in Truskavki, not far from Lviv, into an international resort, but it went nowhere.


If Lviv is to ever become a tourist city, it will have to rely on its stunning architecture. Trilovsky is in charge of the government's attempt to maintain the region's vast architectural legacy. With a tiny budget of about $60,000 a year, Trilovsky has to care for and renovate more than 5,000 heritage buildings.


The almost total lack of money has forced the Ukrainians to rely on any help they can get. An Austrian company recently donated the paint that was used to renovate the townhouses alongside Lviv's renaissance market square.


Trilovsky is also pushing for UNESCO, the United Nations Education and Social Commission, to grant its coveted protected status to central Lviv.


Some of the buildings in the region, especially those that serve as a reminder of Poland's more than 600-year history in western Ukraine, have been less lucky; they have been allowed to go to ruin.


On a hill overlooking the west Ukrainian countryside, stands Podhortsy, a jewel of a castle that was the home of Polish king Jan Sobieski in the late 1600s. It was a museum until 1939. For the last few decades the castle has been used as a hospital, and what could have been a tourism center-piece for the region is now a ruin.