I have just finished a historical walking tour of the city of Lviv and it’s time for coffee. But of the 700 Viennese establishments I’m not sure I’d recommend the Masoch Café. It was opened in homage to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the pioneer of masochism. Leopold’s father was a strict police commissioner, while his aunt regularly spanked him. Anyway, these days a discount is offered to any Masoch Café punter who endures a swift belt from a waitress. Like a fool, I accept a blindfold, then bend over a café table while a woman strikes me with the force of a Ukrainian peasant threshing corn. All that to save 20p.
If that doesn’t tickle your tastes, don’t worry — there are plenty of other things to see and do here that will. With 60 museums, Lviv is like a budget-friendly Vienna. Like Krakow, its Austro-Hungarian avenues are protected by Unesco, yet are free from trinketiers. It feels like the Prague that tourism forgot.
The city is opening up to the outside world thanks to new direct flights from Luton to Lviv on Wizz Air. Ryanair is following suit, with direct flights from Stansted, starting on November 2.
It’s not only the low-cost flights that have suddenly made this city a great new prospect for a bargain weekend break. Once you arrive it is astoundingly cheap. The airport bus to town costs only 14p. A currency devaluation precipitated by political crisis (sound familiar, Boris?) means that a night in a four-star hotel costs less than a single ticket on the Heathrow Express. A beer costs 50p.
My weekend there started with a Friday-night performance of Don Giovanni at the gilded, frescoed Lviv Opera House that was heart-wrenching. The Lvivians in the audience dressed to impress in their frocks and gowns with £1.50 tickets in their hands for seats in the gods. The remaining audience was polyglot. But it wasn’t always thus. When Ukraine was part of the USSR, a statue of Lenin glared across the regal lobby. The grand boulevard outside was named Lenin Prospekt before being rechristened Freedom Avenue after the fall of communism.
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Free city tours take place near Freedom Avenue in Rynok Square every day at 10.30am. My host this Saturday morning, Nastia, paints a picture of Lviv’s past, with Austro-Hungarian overlords and occupation by Poles, Nazis and Soviets. Graffiti in Polish and German dates from when the city was named Lwow and Lemberg by its rulers.
Empire-builders from across Europe rode around on vintage trams that still rattle down cobbled streets. At 8p a ride, they offer a bargain trip back in time. Vladimir Smirnov of vodka fame distilled charcoal-filtered firewater in a rococo mansion on the piazza until Soviet incursions forced him to bank his roubles in London.
The most evocative sight on Nastia’s tour is the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, just off Rynok Square. Melodic chants and incense smoke rise past gilded cherubs like a film-set version of Beethoven’s Vienna. Yet ceiling scaffolds and faded frescoes speak of Soviet ignorance. From the 1950s the church was used as a warehouse, then as a library repository, where socialist economic tomes were stored next to statues of the crucifixion. The church reopened to worshippers and tourists in 2011.
After my walk and coffee-shop spanking I park my sorry posterior at the George Hotel. You could hold another Mozart opera amid the marble columns of its neo-Renaissance interior. Richard Strauss and Franz Liszt stayed here before 45 years of stultifying Soviet occupation preserved Lviv in aspic. Sadly my £23 bedroom harks back to the USSR. It has three single beds and a big box TV. A two-room suite with city views and a fireplace is available for £81.
An open-air market sprawls a block from the opera house every morning. On this occasion it’s part Soviet nostalgia, part Ukrainian folklore, with socialist tie pins, Cyrillic maps and propaganda posters hawked alongside mountain rugs, felt hats and flowery linen national costumes.
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Lunch in the former monastery basement of Trapezna brings with it mushroom dumplings and black pudding with cabbage, with a pumpkin barley porridge side. The chaser is kvass, a light beer made from fermented rye bread tinged with mint and apple. Ukraine may be poor in money, but it’s rich in foraged berries, forest fungi and wild hare. In a fertile land more than twice the size of Britain, yet with only 40 million inhabitants, most families own vast vegetable plots.
The Potocki Palace, a ten-minute walk away, proves that Lviv was once loaded. The triple-winged mansion was built for the president of the Austrian empire in the 1880s and now houses the Lviv Art Gallery. Entry costs 85p. Inside, portraits of fat-lipped Hapsburgs sneer over visitors treading their herringbone parquet. There’s lovely eggshell-blue panelling and a hall of mirrors that were hidden from view when the building housed the Institute of Geology and Geochemistry of Combustible Minerals of the Soviet Union. Fun, fun, fun.
Locals once escaped the USSR’s Kafkaesque machinations with a chilled beer atop Castle Hill. Alas, the footpath to the city’s high point is as sobering as an endless MC Escher labyrinth. The view is worth it, though. There are castles, churches, mansions, markets and trains that rattle six hours to Kiev in one direction and one hour into the EU in the other. By stepping on to the flagpole podium, I momentarily become Lviv’s loftiest spectator. Then the sun sets on this city of 750,000 that spent decades in the shade, to rise again tomorrow.
The budget hotel
George Hotel
If it was good enough for the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the George with its wildly varying rooms — from no-bathroom £23 triples to ritzy £81 suites — should be good enough for you. The free breakfast is a belly-busting feast of omelettes, porridge and Ukrainian chocolate cakes, all accompanied by live music (georgehotel.com.ua).
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The luxury hotel
Leopolis Hotel
The city’s finest five-star establishment sits on a regal perch midway between Rynok Square and the Lviv Opera House. The rooftop terrace hides from the hubbub, as does the Italianate interior patio. Direct bookings also qualify for a free airport transfer, allowing guests to skip the 14p bus. B&B doubles cost from £86 (leopolishotel.com).
Need to know
Wizz Air (0330 9770444, wizzair.com) flies three times weekly from Luton to Lviv, from £36 return. Free daily city tours are operated by Lviv Buddy (lvivbuddy.com). For more information, see the official tourism portal lviv.travel