The text mentions the former (now defunct) Lviv City Hall, which was built under Casimir the Great, who was also said by the author to have laid the foundations for three Lviv cathedrals - the Latin, Greek Catholic and Armenian. Casimir the Great also granted Lviv the privilege of Magdeburg Law. The rest of the text describes the history of Lviv and its relationship with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. (Source: "Tygodnik Illustrowany", Warsaw 1862, T:6, p. 35., after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Description of the Lviv City Hall.

The old Lviv city hall stood unmoved for four centuries. This king, having permanently united the Ruthenian land and its capital Lviv with the Crown, moved the city in 1300 from its former location to the new one it occupies today ("novam struendae urbis locum designavit", writes the author of the work: "Vita Praesulum Premislien"). He laid the foundations for the three cathedrals that exist in Lviv today: the Latin, Greek-Catholic and Armenian ones, endowed the city with privileges and arranged it according to Magdeburg law. We leave it to scholarly criticism to investigate whether the privilege of Kaiser W., granting Lviv the Magdeburg law, is a forgery (as the biased, though thorough, chronicler of Lviv, Dyonizy Zubrzycki, claims) or genuine.

There is, however, no doubt that Lviv had the importance of a self-governing city already during the reign of this king, as was the case for all the cities of the so-called Cracow in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This matter will probably become clearer, along with many other dark sides of Lviv's history, when Mr Jan Wagilewicz takes over the management of the city archive, which the present city council has decided to entrust to him.

The existence of the Lviv city hall began at that time. Lviv was one of those cities which, with their own administration, police force, courts, and even their own army, were in the full sense of the word small republics within the common homeland. This freedom of the cities was by no means detrimental to their size, nor to the rights of the Republic as a whole; on the contrary, the suppression of their freedoms and self-government for the benefit of the noble power that prevailed in the nation was the beginning of the spoiling of the common cause in Poland.

Lviv, the favourite residence of Jagiełło and many other Polish kings, is a vivid and beautiful image of such a small Republic. Lviv was also very attached to its kings, especially to Jogaila, as evidenced by, among many other things, a document found in the city archives ("published in full in Głos"), in which, at the request of the citizens of Lviv, the King and his eternally memorable wife Jadwiga gave the most solemn assurance that they would never detach the city of Lviv or the land of Lviv from the Crown and would never cede it to a foreign ruler. Lviv could once have been called the heart of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, just as Krakow was its head, especially when Lithuania still had its own dukes and Warsaw was not the capital of Poland.

The cordial relationship between Lviv and the whole motherland never ceased; and when other cities occupied more important positions in the Republic, it never ceased to go along with them for the better in making sacrifices for the common mother, in sharing in all the changes of her happiness. This heart of the Republic was the City Hall. Lviv's City Hall was, as in any similar city, the focus of its public life; the most important domestic matters of the city and those pertaining to the entire homeland were based on the City Hall.

For four centuries, the bell of the town hall tower rang annually on 22 February ("in festo Cathedrae S. Petri") for all the citizens to gather at the town hall for the important matter of electing the mayors. It was a very solemn moment in which the archbishop took part, preceding the act of election with a splendid service, and the mayor of Lviv, assisting the election on behalf of the king. At the sound of the town hall bell, all activities in the town ceased, the gates were closed and the guard of the town, led by its headman ("proconsul nocturnus"), went to the town hall to lay the keys of the gates on the councillors' table.

All the dignitaries of the town, the states or collegia ("ordines") of the council, the bench, forty Armenian men and women, the guilds, the brotherhood (including the most prominent brotherhood of writers) and the common people went in solemn procession to the town hall; the holders of municipal dignities laid down their insignia and passed on their offices, to receive them anew from the hands of the newly elected government or to pass them on to their successors. The year 1772 put an end to everything. The magistrate became an office whose members, and later also the mayors, were appointed by the gubernium. Only for a dozen years or so were the mayors and elected councillors left in office. But what was their power? Here was the lowest rank in the hierarchy of offices: to serve, not to rule, became their right from then on. What a difference from the old days! In addition to the election of the highest municipal authority, multiple courts were held at the town hall, and these courts had great power, and there were no appeals from them but to the king himself; to Lviv, on the other hand, appeals were made from the courts of all Rus' cities. The right of the sword, usually enjoyed by cities endowed with Magdeburg law, extended here even to nobles committing criminal acts within the city.

The town hall also witnessed the death penalty imposed on noblemen who violated the peace and security of the town. The Lviv Town Hall was also the venue for matters pertaining to the whole of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1425, a document written at the town hall ("feria tertia proxima post festum Sti. Francisci") assured the city of its vote for the election of Ladislaus Varna. In 1464 ("feria quinta ipso die S. Luciae") the city of Lviv concludes a confederation with the nobility of Lviv and the Jewish community at the city hall for the defence of the whole country against all invaders and attackers because of the violence caused by the so-called crusaders.

A similar confederation was formed by the town with the nobility in 1604 against the violators, and in 1606 against Zebrzydowski's rebellion. How many dispatches the city did not send from the town hall, either to coronations of kings and queens, or to royal nuptials, or to the Sejm of the Commonwealth in matters important for the whole country or for the city itself, or to city assemblies usually held in Łańcut, especially in the 15th century! How many did not receive splendid foreign envoys going from various powers either to the Commonwealth or directly to the "famous city"! The wealth and importance of Lviv in the commercial world was also frequently witnessed by the local town hall. It was home to splendid gifts to kings, their families, foreign deputies or dignitaries of the Republic, and, most importantly, frequent offerings for the good of the homeland.

In 1574, the Republic borrowed from the town to pay for the army and pawned the crown jewels, i.e. the crown and sceptre, at the town hall. These jewels were handed over by the town, after the election of Henry of Valois, with the reversal of the senate, into the hands of Jan Tarło, who was authenticated for this purpose together with other lords. Later, the city made substantial loans and offerings to the Commonwealth on several occasions. The Town Hall was also a place where monasteries, other towns or distinguished families deposited their funds and documents. At times of great triumphs of the old Republic, Lviv never failed to show its greatest joy with games held in the market square, with the city hall and tower usually shining brightly with fire.

One of the most splendid celebrations of this kind took place in 1611. In the midst of numerous and oft-repeated sieges, by Tartars, Turks, Wallachians, and finally the saddest of all, by Khmelnytskyi and later Swedes, the city hall with its tower always survived, and just as the city's loyalty to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was unshaken, so no enemy blow shook this emblem of the city's splendour and power. The town hall was surrounded by numerous houses and small cottages; it was surrounded by storerooms; its cellars housed the most important stores and stored the vast resources of the trade connecting east and west. The citizens of the town wanted to add to the town's splendour by decorating the town hall.

The tower was raised several times, and finally in 1617 Marcin Kempian, town councillor, at his own expense, gave it an octagonal form and placed a stone boat on it as an emblem of the great importance of the town, whose nave was governed by the council sitting in the town hall. In this form, the town hall stood, with its octagonal tower, surrounded by a cluster of houses guarded by it, until 1826. Under Austrian rule, it occurred to the engineers to remove the foundation stone from under the tower for a purpose incomprehensible to any architect.

The tower collapsed, the town hall was covered in rubble, and the old building was replaced by a new one, built in a barracks style, with a tower in the shape of a giant chimney. It was a great cost to the town, and little, if any, decoration. The building and its tower were burnt down in 1848, but today, renovated, it has not changed its barracks appearance. Today, the newly formed city council, elected from among the citizens, sits in the city hall as a faint shadow of the splendour and self-governing power of former Lviv.