About "Lviv streets"
"Lviv streets" is a database containing current and historical names of streets and squares of the city. It comprises collected and systematized information from reference books, as well as from guide books, address books, historical maps, archival materials. The project aims to provide the ability to track the history of renaming and to help reconstruct the formation of modern streets by visualizing the process of their change and transformation.
The project is implemented on the base of Google Maps with additional programming which enables zooming the map in/out and viewing actual objects, tracking formation of names and appearance of streets and squares of the city. More information about the use of the database can be found here.
A study of the renaming process is more than a "documentation" of political and historical changes. It was the city's central streets that were renamed most often, and the fact had — or has — above all a political nature. Studies show how in the names of streets the city can be seen as layers, as erasing and discovering of different meanings, as an intersection of ideologies and cultures, as a formation of memorial landscapes and contesting memory, and also as the place for a possible reconsideration of the past. In the history of Lviv there are many such examples. For instance, in the 1870s a significant part of streets was renamed in honor of Polish figures and events considered key ones to Polish history. Almost every subsequent wave of renaming throughout the 20th century reflected ideological, national, and political preferences of the authorities and the city’s belonging to different nations. Renamings during the Second World War, when the Soviet and German occupations changed each other, were specially radical and frequent. The last major wave of renaming took place in the early 1990s.
Using the database
The "Lviv streets" project is based on a present-day map of the city. The names are placed from the present to the oldest; in parentheses one can see years when each name was actual. Most of historical names are given in the official or most common language of the period. If at some point a street was divided into several smaller ones or formed due to the merger of shorter streets, it can be seen in the map by clicking the specific name.
You can look for present and historical names by means of a simple or advanced search. For the simple search the AutoFill function is active, so it is enough to enter two letters and the system will offer all the options available.
The advanced search makes it possible to narrow the results by the following categories: by name, by years, by street type, by name type. The system searches the internal database, which consists of original names in Cyrillic transliteration (for Polish and German names) or English transliteration (for Russian and Ukrainian names). This provides a more accurate result.
How to join the project?
If you have noticed an inaccuracy or have more information, we invite you to write to us through the "Comment" function in the upper right corner. The "Link to the current map configuration" function is nearby, allowing you to save or send a link to the current map configuration. You can also write at [email protected]
Project authors
Marichka
Pohorilko
Zhanna
Ozirna
Oksana Dudko
Lyubomyr Oliynyk
(siteGist)
Current project support