Situated at 32 Gródecka Street, at the junction with Janowska Street, the church can look back on more than half a century of history, dating back to the early Renaissance. It was still a tradition in the Middle Ages for craft guilds to have churches entrusted to their care in every city. Thus, in medieval Lviv, the weavers had under their care the Gothic Church of St Stanislaus, the Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross, located on the Janow route, belonged to the shoemakers' guild, the Church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross (on the site of the former State Court building, the so-called "Palace of Justice", now part of the city's main square), and the Church of the Assumption of the Holy Cross (on the site of the former State Court building, the so-called "Palace of the Holy Cross", now part of the city's main square). The Church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross (on the site of the former State Court building, the so-called "Palace of Justice", now part of the Lviv Polytechnic) was under the auspices of the guilds of blacksmiths, locksmiths, boilermakers and needle-makers, while members of the guilds of potters and ropemakers gathered in the Łyczakow church of St Lawrence. St Anne's Church in Grodetsk - the only one of the above-mentioned that still exists - belonged to the tailors' guild. The story of its origins could form the plot of a detective story.

The Lviv Tailors' Guild was one of the oldest confraternities of craftsmen, functioning since the beginning of the 15th century. In the bourgeoisie's hierarchy, tailors tended to belong to the middle class, although there were some rich people among them. The oldest town book, dating from 1382-1389, lists ten town tailors. In 1425, when the burghers of Lwów, headed by the mayor, councillors, jurors and guild elders took the oath of allegiance to King Władysław Jagiello and his successors, two tailor guild elders were mentioned by name: Peter Rhutenus and Jan Heilesborg. Later, on 10 June 1533, Sigismund the Old approved the status of the tailors' guild. Prior to this period there had been a bloodily suppressed 'tailors' revolt', although the date given in the sources (usually 1507 or 1509) is uncertain. Tailors' apprentices, obliged by statute to obey the foremen, rebelled against them and tried to leave the town under cover of darkness. They were stopped and attacked by the town guards, the so-called cepaks (the name comes from the type of armament). A regular brawl ensued at the place where the church stands today. It was an undeveloped area at the time, as one source reads:

"Apart from St. Anne's Church up to the then Sokolniki Road, or today's Kopernika Street, the whole of this great western expanse of Lvov still presented, even then, a great gap in settlement. It was occupied only by marshes, ponds and meadows, with sparse clumps of trees and field paths".

In the History of the City of Lviv by Jozef Bartholomew Zimorovic (1597-1677), we read about the event that gave rise to the erection of the church as follows:

"The church in honour of S. Anna Mother of God the Virgin consecrated at the head of the area, the western street opposite Krakow sharing the sad accident owes its beginning. In the year 1507, young people learning the art of tailoring, having abandoned their masters by this route, were sad to leave, but were soon surprised by the town's night watchmen, who in vain got into a fight, as is customary in this type of craftsmen, stubborn and slow, with the guardians' cogged flails, sharpened to the shape of hedgehogs, A few fugitives were killed, buried on the same spot and marked with a cross to commemorate the incident; after a few memorable years, the bodies buried there from the general public were respected, so that the cemetery would not be turned into a common place. At the end of that year the tailors' guild, when the municipal government gave them wood from the nearby forest, erected a small church, and when it was burnt down by the enemies, it was built again partly of wood and partly of brickwork.".

Sources agree that the church was originally wooden, and since it was located in the suburbs, it is not difficult to guess that it had no chance of survival during the city's invasions. As early as 1509, when Lvov was invaded by the Moldavian hospodar Bogdan III, the church was burnt down. It was partially rebuilt from wood, and in 1599 a completely new church was already built, which was consecrated by Archbishop Jan Solikowski. During the Cossack invasion of 1648, the church burned down again. The Augustinian friars, troubled by the invasions and tired of the inhospitable, marshy surroundings on the Pełtwia river, moved from the Halytskie suburb to the Krakowskie suburb, where they took possession in 1671 of a modest St Anne's temple with a small round tower, with the permission of the then archbishop, Wojciech Korycinski. Next to the church they erected monastery buildings.

Unfortunately, no descriptions of the interior of the church from that period have survived, but we do know that the image of Mary and the Child placed in the main altar was considered miraculous. It was described by Stanislav Barącz, a poet and translator who came from an old and distinguished Lviv family:

"There is a beautiful Byzantine-style painting in the church of St. Anne, formerly of the Augustinians, placed in the altar, expressing the Virgin Mary with Christ on her arm, holding a sceptre, wearing golden crowns."

This painting became famous for its graces already in the first half of the 18th century, when, according to reports, thanks to the prayers said here, the Mother of God heard the requests and saved the town from a plague in 1710. Four brothers died at the convent at that time, including Prior Prosper Jurkowski. In 1772, the Augustinian convent had seven fathers and two brothers. From the beginning of its foundation, the number of friars did not exceed ten, and they faced similar difficulties and problems as in all religious orders of that time. In his Visitation Ordinances of 1776, the provincial, Szymon Gorski, noted that the prior, Benedict Danilowski, was not fulfilling his duties properly, so he was deprived of his office. Two monks were also sent on a fifteen-day retreat to Zaturzec and Załozce due to drunkenness, night trips outside the monastery and false accusations against the prior.

In 1730, the church was rebuilt in Baroque style and this appearance has survived to the present day. The monastery, which according to Archbishop Jan Skarbek's account of 1731 was still wooden, housed a library. It housed one of the largest and most valuable book collections in Lviv at the time, including priceless manuscripts from the 16th century. The inspector who visited the convent in 1735 described the book collection as a "treasure" and ordered an inventory of books by title and author. He also ordered the erection of brick buildings for the convent, which took many years, since in 1767, during the provincial congregation, the provincial granted an allowance of 25,000 florins for this purpose. It is worth mentioning that the Lwów convent belonged to the poor, since it was completely exempted from having to pay the provincial contribution enacted in 1655, as well as from the contribution for compiling the book of the Archconfraternity of the Consolation of the Blessed Virgin Mary enacted in 1682. At the time of the cassation, the property of the Lwów convent was estimated at just over 30,000 florins, a decidedly low amount.

As part of the so-called Josephine abolition of 1783, the Augustinian Order, like other convents in Galicia, was abolished, the church was turned into a parish, and a trivial school was set up in the monastery. The monastery library was handed over to the University of Lviv. In 1810 a statue of John of Nepomuk was erected in front of the church. In 1824 and 1853-62 the church was repaired, which included the construction of a tower with four bells, topped with a baroque cupola and a western part with a presbytery apse. A clock with three dials was placed on the tower. The oldest of the bells was cast in 1663 in the bell-foundry of the Lvov master Andrew Franke, 0.55 metres in diameter, with the Latin inscription: "Sonet Vox Mea in Arribus Tvis Domine 1663". In 1871, the country scholar and documentarian of Galician history, Antoni Schneider (1825-1880), described the bells of the Augustinian church and the clock tower as follows:

"In the front tower, in addition to four small bells, a striking clock with plates (numerals) showing on three sides was set up during the last restoration at municipal expense. The oldest and largest of the local bells, weighing about 112 pounds, was cast in 1603; two other smaller ones, without inscriptions and year markings; the third, the smallest one, of a strange sound and composition, was cast in 1841 by Jan Jaroszewski in Lubaczów".

In the 20th century, the church and the monastery experienced various historical events. Still in the interwar period, during the works of 1927, the helmet of the tower was added according to the design of B. Wiktor, and a porch was added to the church. After the Second World War, the building housed a furniture shop and later a cash register called Gródek's. In the 1990s, the building was handed over to the Greek Catholic Church and in 1997 the interior was restored. Today, the church has a single-nave structure with cross-vaulted interiors, a gabled roof and a three-storey octagonal tower topped with a Baroque cupola. A vestibule decorated with pilasters was added in front of the tower. It is oriented towards the west. The former monastery building adjacent to the church has been preserved in its 18th-century form.

Location: 32 Gródecka Street, Lviv, Ukraine