Before the park was built, the High Castle was a favourite walking place for Lviv residents. To the north, on the castle's slopes, was the "Kisielki" sanatorium, where Maria Konopnicka died in 1910. The area of today's park was then called the Stryisky Suburb, and the land belonged to the city as far back as the charter of Casimir the Great in the mid-14th century.

The area was covered with quagmires and thickets, and was not suitable either for pasture or for buildings. It was inaccessible, bleak and dangerous, as it served as a refuge for fugitives hiding from justice. In the second half of the 19th century, after the creation of the Galician Autonomy, the authorities tried to take care of the city's status, prioritising all investments that would serve to distinguish the city as the capital of Galicia. The development of green areas and the creation of a modern, extensive park were among the most important initiatives of this period. The neglected area of the former cemetery did not begin to be tidied up by the city until the mid 1870s, on the initiative of Alderman Stanislaw Niemczynowski (1887-1891 ) - a January insurgent, president of the Chamber of Handicrafts, master tailor and city councillor of Lviv. The project was commissioned to Arnold Röhring, the inspector of city gardens. Situated in the southern part of the city "on an 83 morga [according to other sources it was 86 morgas - ABR] area, criss-crossed by deep ravines and dominated by lofty hills", the park became an adornment of the city. Its one-storey part was built on the site of the former Stryysky cemetery, established in 1784, but functioning only until 1823, when a new cemetery was established in what is now Stryysky Street. Franciszek Jaworski, wrote in 1910 in his work Lwów stary i wczorajszy:

"Twenty years ago there was a romantic emptiness in this place, an impassable tangle of ravines, ravines, clay dunes, a habitat for all sorts of vagabonds, and sometimes an audience for the scandals of bloodthirsty youths, who, without any supervision from their elders, practised shooting with firearms and arranged their favourite games of "gendarme and brigand". The abandoned Austrian fort was the only trace of the human hand. It was only a few years before the National Exhibition of 1894 that the magistrate began to afforest the wilderness, and the exhibition itself did the rest.".

The design of the park included the establishment of a central hornbeam avenue, the creation of an artificial pond, numerous plantings of deciduous trees, conifers and ornamental shrubs. In 1888, the city physician Dr. Antoni Pawlikowski wrote the following about the importance of the park in his report On Health Relations in the City of Lviv :

"From a hygienic point of view, the Kilinski Park is of considerable importance for Lviv, because the tree cover of this park consists mostly of conifers (about 35 thousand trees), which when they grow into larger trees will emit a lot of resinous fragrance. The healthy and clean air from the fields and meadows by which the park is surrounded encourages the public to visit it in large numbers and already makes it a most popular place for the walking public. [...] As the Wuleck land is conducive to the cultivation of pin trees, such trees will be grown there and a considerable area has already been planted with them this year. Kilińskiego Park has many species of native and exotic trees and shrubs, which will soon be labelled with plaques to familiarise the public, and especially young people, with the nomenclature of woody plants, thus encouraging a love of natural science."

Around 40,000 trees have been planted in the park, including numerous maples, dwarf chestnuts, alders, beeches, birches, several species of oak, acacias, willows, rowans and lime trees. Of the coniferous trees and shrubs, there were pines, spruces, Canadian Christmas trees, cypresses, cedars, junipers, yews and larches. Ornamental shrubs included the common mahogany, white dogwood, red hazel, hawthorn, carrageenan, olive, buckthorn, elderberry and jasmine. When the Universal Exhibition was opened in 1894, which welcomed hundreds of thousands of people, the Lviv City Pavilion, built according to a design by Juliusz Hochberger from the exhibition, was later moved to the park and a restaurant was opened there to sit with music in the summer. Crowds of Lviv citizens came here for walks, while in winter the slopes were used for skiing and sledging. In 1925, Mieczysław Orłowicz, a sightseeing expert and populariser of tourism, wrote the following about the park: "Its terrain is the mountainous slopes of several ravines covered with picturesque groups of trees with flower beds, artificial castle ruins, a pond and a restaurant [...]". The aforementioned ruins were created from the remains of a former bridge, stone boundary posts and... gravestones from the old cemetery. The pond in the park still exists and remains one of the favourite places of Lviv residents, who visit the site with their children to feed the swans and fish and relax on the nearby benches.

The period of the First World War and the subsequent war with the Bolsheviks brought loss and destruction to the entire city, including the city parks. During the hostilities, an Austrian plane fell on the park, and in November 1918, fallen Ukrainian riflemen were buried in the park, exhumed after the war and moved to the Janov Cemetery. Jerzy Bandrowski wrote in 1921:

"The Kilińskiego Park and the Powystawowy Square had turned into a battlefield where enemy shooting chains were fighting each other. Rifle shots rang out in this pleasant corner of Lviv, as they did in all of it - and the Powystaw Square was then a battleground. It must have been extremely sad then... The emptiness and the leafless, bare branches of the trees.... The autumn gloom, the greyness, the cold, the rifle shots and that mournful tragedy."

In 1922, the press reported that the monuments in the park were falling apart and, due to the destruction of the greenery by vandals, there was even a plan in 1924 to surround the lawns with barbed wire. Fortunately, money was found to clean up the park after the war, and in 1922 there was even a ski jump, on which the Lviv championships were held. In the summer of 1924, the lower park terrace was tidied up and the park turned into a real showpiece of the city. The magistrate also purchased new benches and bins.

It is also worth explaining the origin of the park's former name. It commemorated a colonel in the Kościuszko army, Jan Kilinski (1760-1819), a shoemaker by profession. Thanks to the generosity of local residents, a monument by the Lvov sculptor Julian Markowski was erected in the lower part of the park. The history of the monument itself is extremely interesting. After the municipal authorities approved the plaster model of the monument, a huge unprocessed 5 X 5 m boulder was brought to the park, which was transported to its destination by a cart drawn by eight pairs of oxen. After receiving funds for the work, Markowski and his helpers began working the stone, and as he did not start until 1892, it was not possible to complete the sculpture as planned, i.e. before the opening of the Universal Exhibition, which fell on the anniversary of the Kosciuszko Insurrection (1894). The statue was not placed on a pedestal until the autumn of 1895 - and from the start it aroused a number of controversies. Kilinski's figure was depicted in full, with the colonel holding a sabre in his right hand and a banner in his left. Art historians and experts considered the monument outdated in form and too pompous in expression. Kornel Makuszyński lamented in 1921: "Terrible monument to a heroic shoemaker: it is certain that Kilinski sewed better lents than the sculptor who desecrated him with a sculpture." Nevertheless, the monument became a symbol of patriotism for the city's inhabitants, and for more than a century it was a silent witness of historical changes and political turmoil. It was fortunate that the damaged monument was rescued during the Soviet era, to which Kilinsky's immensely "rightful" - after all, proletarian - background contributed. At the beginning of the 21st century, the sculpture was missing both its two most important attributes - the sabre and the banner - as well as part of the inscription plaques. In 2006, with funds from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, a comprehensive restoration of the monument was carried out, as well as conservation and cleaning work around the sculpture. The work was carried out by a Polish-Ukrainian conservation team under the direction of Professor Janusz Smaza of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

In the 20th century, the park underwent numerous reconstructions and renovations. In 1930, a radio tower was built here, while in 1951 the narrow-gauge railway was partially dismantled and the Lviv Children's Railway was created on the tracks. A year later, the park gate from Parkowa Street gained decorative arches on Corinthian columns designed by Henrik Shvetsky-Winecki. The park area was significantly enlarged by including the adjacent wasteland and new trees were planted. The entire area was fenced off and the art palace and rotunda were converted into sports facilities. Part of the park was also set aside for playgrounds. Today, the area of Stryysky Park is 52 ha and is divided into three parts: the lower terrace (park), the upper terrace and the forest park. Since its creation, it has been one of the most charming places in Lviv, and remains so to this day. Lviv's residents enjoy feeding the swans, strolling through the ruins and viewing the orangery, children play on the playgrounds and by the fountains with fairy tale characters, and young people use the skate park built in 2008, the first in Ukraine. In 2009, the Kilinsky monument was renovated with funds provided by the Polish government, and the alleys were rebuilt and the lighting upgraded. In 2013, the fountain with the character of the boy from the popular Ukrainian fairy tale, Ivasyka-Telesyka, located at the main gate from Park Street, was renovated.

"However, the post-exhibition square and Kilinsky Park will only be worth mentioning for the future chronicler of Lviv. Too much life is going on there today, it is too often described by reporters and feyletons, too many couples in love walk there, and too often all the elegant Lviv people choose to spend time there [...]," wrote Franciszek Jaworski in 1910. More than a hundred years after these words, it is safe to say that Stryisky Park has certainly created memories for several generations of Lviv citizens. And one hopes that it will remain such a place for many more to come.