Metropolitan Basilica - Cathedral of the Latin Rite in Lviv
With the seizure of power in Red Ruthenia by King Casimir the Great, Lviv grew more and more rapidly. The influx of people from the west necessitated the building of new Catholic churches. The Halych archbishops made efforts to move their capital from Halych to Lviv, and in the early 1460s King Casimir asked Pope Urban V for permission to erect a cathedral. By this time, the first construction work was already underway, which continued throughout the 15th century. The most important Catholic church in the city was created, which in 1405 was finally given the name of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is called the Latin Cathedral, as opposed to the Eastern Rite and Armenian Cathedrals. Issued in 1414, the bull of Antipope John XXIII "In eminenti" granted the cathedral full metropolitan church privileges, confirming the transfer of the capital of the Halych archbishops to Lviv. As the first, the title of Archbishop of Lvov was given to Jan Rzeszowski.

Consecrated in 1481, the Latin Cathedral is the only such well-preserved Gothic church in Lviv. Situated near the market square, it became part of the city's landscape as a three-nave hall with a body of three bays and an elongated presbytery. Of the planned two massive towers in the façade, one - the northern tower - was completed. As time passed, the cathedral was enriched with numerous chapels, the furnishings changed, new altars, tombstones, epitaphs and stained glass windows appeared.

The cathedral also became famous for its miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, which hung on the outer wall of the cathedral as an epitaph to Catherine Domagalicz, who had died in childhood. The image was painted in 1598 by Jozef Szolc-Wolfowicz, the girl's grandfather, a Lvov painter and geometer. This image of the Virgin Mary of Grace - the Beautiful Star of Lviv, also known as Murka or Domagalichivska - was ceremonially transferred in 1645 to a specially built chapel adjacent to the cathedral presbytery. Important events in the history of the Polish kingdom are associated with this painting. On 1 April 1656, on his return from Silesia, King Jan Kazimierz, facing a further battle against the Swedish invaders, made solemn vows in front of this very painting, which was moved to the cathedral for the occasion. The King entrusted the Republic to the protection of Mary, choosing her as Queen of the Polish Crown - Regina Regni Poloniae - and at the same time promised to improve the lot of the people: "that the people of my kingdom may be freed from unjust burdens and oppressions".

The final transfer of the painting to the cathedral took place after its general restoration, which was undertaken by the Archbishop of Lwow, Wacław Hieronim Sierakowski, in 1760. New chapels were built, the old ones were rebuilt, and the interior of the church was redecorated, with many elements of the former furnishings removed. Archbishop Sierakowski came under the criticism of the city authorities, and the dispute was joined by many important personalities connected with the royal and primate's court, both bishops of Lvov - Ruthenian and Armenian, and many other state and church dignitaries. The case was finally concluded by Pope Clement XII, who sided with the Lviv metropolitan.

Among the Lvov artists who participated in the modernisation of the cathedral's interior were the architect Piotr Polejowski, the sculptors Maciej Polejowski, Jan Obrocki, Franciszek Olędzki (Olendzki), and the author of the polychrome Stanisław Stroiński. The multi-storey main altar, erected in 1766, became the dominant feature of the church's furnishings. It is decorated with monumental columns and Rococo statues by Maciej Polejowski. The architectural structure is richly decorated with gilded ornamentation. The altar is the setting for a small painting of Our Lady of Grace. The miraculous image was crowned with papal crowns by Archbishop Sierakowski in 1776. This was one of the last great celebrations in the cathedral.

The times of the Partitions of Poland were difficult. The cathedral was affected by Austrian requisitions made for the wars against Napoleon Bonaparte. Major renovation work began at the end of the 19th century in an attempt to make a connection with the cathedral's Gothic past. Most of the designs for the new polychrome and stained glass windows were then entrusted to the pupils of Jan Matejko. At the beginning of the 20th century, renovation and restoration work continued, hampered by the outbreak of World War I, further requisitions by the Austrians and the Polish-Ukrainian fighting in 1919.For example, on 31 October 1925, a solemn mass took place in the Lwów Cathedral before the ashes of a soldier killed in Lwów were placed in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

After the end of the Second World War, the hardest years for Lviv and the Latin Cathedral began. The Cathedral was in danger of being closed down, and the clergy suffered harassment and terror from the new Soviet authorities. Fr Rafal (Wladyslaw) Kiernicki (1912-1995), the parish priest, had a special place among the pastoral workers fighting for the permanent functioning of the cathedral. On 4 May 2012, his beatification process was opened in the Latin Cathedral of Lviv.

In 1946, Metropolitan Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak was forced to leave Lviv. The image of Our Lady of Grace was transported to Poland. In 1974, it was placed in the main altar of the pro-cathedral in Lubaczów. In 1980, the painting underwent thorough conservation in Krakow and was deposited in the treasury of Wawel Cathedral. The copy of the image intended for the pro-cathedral in Lubaczów was crowned by Pope John Paul II on Jasna Góra on 19 June 1983, the second copy - from the cathedral in Lwów - was crowned by Pope John Paul II in Lwów in 2001.

. Conservation work
The first years of Ukraine's independence were a time of transformation gradually changing the situation of the Roman Catholic Church. On 18 May 1991 the ingress to the cathedral of Archbishop Marian Jaworski took place. Thanks to the commitment of the new metropolitan, the cathedral began to regain its former splendour. In 1999, he commissioned a team of Polish and Ukrainian specialists to carry out the first comprehensive restoration work in many years.

The financial burden of the work fell largely on the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Polish Senate. Under the patronage of Archbishop Jaworski and under the supervision of the Polish-Ukrainian conservation commission, as well as the "Polish Community" Association, which was coordinating the work at the time, specialists from the Conservation Institute in Lviv, as well as Polish conservators and art historians, began work in the cathedral's presbytery.

The team of Ukrainian and Polish specialists was led by the art conservator Józef Steciński. The work, which was carried out in stages, consisted of cleaning and protecting the elements of the main altar, the stained-glass windows and the paintings and gilding on the walls and the vault, supplementing cavities and removing dirt from the stone parts of the music balcony and portals. In 2000-2001, with funds from the Senate of the Republic of Poland, the "Polish Community" Association carried out conservation repairs to the roof truss and roofing of the cathedral. The floors in the cathedral were partially replaced. These initial conservation and renovation works were completed in 2001 prior to the pilgrimage of the Holy Father John Paul II to Ukraine.

A separate conservation programme included the restoration of the paintings on the exterior walls of the cathedral, commemorating the Domagalicz chapel, which was demolished during the renovation of the cathedral on the orders of Archbishop Sierakowski. They depict an image of Our Lady of Grace and a tondo with a portrait of the chapel's founder. Thanks to funding from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the "Polish Community" Association, the paintings were restored by Natalia Slipchenko from Lviv and Elżbieta Niemyska from Warsaw. In 2003, under the direction of Józef Steciński, the painting on the southern elevation of the Chapel of Christ Crucified was restored and partially reconstructed.

Thanks to funding from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the wall monument to General Józef Dwernicki, who died in 1857, was restored in 1997-1999. Originally this monument, created in 1864 by the Lviv sculptor Parys Filippi, was located in the side nave of the Church of the Discalced Carmelites of St Michael the Archangel in Lviv (now the Church of the Studite Fathers). The General's statue, after restoration work carried out under the direction of Dr Hab. Janusz Smaza, was placed in 2000 in the Latin Chapel of St Joseph, adjacent to the presbytery of the Cathedral.

At the request of the Polish Community Association, the restoration of the stone chapel of the Lord's Tomb at the northern façade of the cathedral was funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture in 2005-2009 under the direction of Dr Janusz Smaza. Together with the Boim Chapel, it is a remnant of the former cemetery surrounding the church. In turn, in 2013, inside the temple, at the request of the Society for the Care of Monuments, Marta Szymkowiak and Anna Kudzia underwent conservation work on the 1574 tombstone of Baltazar Bzowski of Ostoja coat of arms. In addition, Marta Szymkowiak restored the tombstone of Stanisław Hanl (d. 1570). Both tombstones are located under the cathedral's music choir.

In 2006. Jan Wiłkojć restored the painting 'The Holy Trinity' from the altarpiece under the same challenge, and the painting 'The Hospitality of Abraham' (the veil of this altarpiece) underwent conservation work by Ewa Wiłkojć and Julia Ostrowska. In 2009, Jan Wiłkojć and his team carried out conservation work on the altars from the chapels of Our Lady and Our Lady of Czestochowa. Earlier, in 2006-2008, conservation work was carried out on the altar paintings; the conservators working on them were Maria and Ingeborga Banasz, Krystyna Kokocińska, Izabela Malczewska and Józef Steciński. In 2006. Marianna Kwiatkowska, under the direction of Jan Wiłkojec, conserved the bead-embroidered antepedium from the main altar.

An important stage in the comprehensive conservation work in the cathedral was the restoration of the main altar, carried out in 2006-2008 by a team of conservators under the direction of Jan Wiłkojec. It covered the entire structure of the altarpiece, including the sculptural decoration, silver elements and the painting on the veil by Antonio Tavellio, dating from 1778, depicting the 'Assumption of the Virgin'. This painting, as well as the 'Coronation of the Virgin Mary with St Casimir and St Stanislaus Szczepanowski', dating from 1902 and painted by Stanisław Kaczor-Batowski (now on the side wall of the presbytery), underwent conservation work by teams under the direction of Dr Ewa Wiłkojć. The conservation work was completed before 22 November 2008 and the solemn ingress into the cathedral of the new Metropolitan of Lwow, Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki.

It took six years to carry out comprehensive conservation work on the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament (Wiśniowieccy, Zolota), considered one of the most valuable in the cathedral. It owes its present appearance to a major reconstruction, funded by Prince Janusz Wiśniowiecki and Theophila Wiśniowiecka, née Leszczyńska, in the first half of the 18th century. It was then that a Baroque altar decorated with sculptures by Thomas Hutter was erected in the chapel. In the same century, further decorations were added to the interior: Baroque frescoes, now attributed to Stanislaw Stroinski, and Rococo stuccos from the workshop of Jan Obrocki. The theme of the composition was linked to the chapel's name, as the vault is crowned by a scene of the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. A team under the direction of Jan Wiłkojec carried out conservation work on all the chapel's interior furnishings. Funding for the work was provided by the Polish Ministry of Culture, and coordination was handled by the Kraków branch of the Polish Community Association. Completed in 2015.

The same team of conservators started the conservation of the Jabłonowski Chapel (the Chapel of Christ Crucified) in 2015, financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Senate of the Republic of Poland at the request of the Association of Polish Education and Culture.

The conservation work in the Latin Cathedral also included a rich set of stained glass windows, which, were created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This work was part of a larger project aimed at restoring the Gothic character of the church's presbytery. The selection of themes for the new stained-glass windows was also important to the authors of the programme, as all compositions were to combine religious, historical and patriotic themes. The stained glass windows are undergoing restoration work with funding from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Senate of the Republic of Poland. Their management was entrusted to Ewelina and Robert Kędzielewski. The work was coordinated by the 'Polish Community' Association and is currently being carried out by the Association of Polish Education and Culture.

In 2013, the richly illustrated 21st volume of the publication 'Churches and Roman Catholic Monasteries of the Former Ruthenian Voivodeship, Part I' was published as part of the monumental series 'Materials for the History of Sacred Art in the Eastern Lands of the Former Republic of Poland'. It was devoted exclusively to the Latin Cathedral in Lviv. It contains a study of the history of the cathedral from the Middle Ages to the present day, the history of the transformation of the interior of the church and of conservation work from the end of the nineteenth century, through the inter-war period, to the most recent times.

The Lviv Cathedral - Sanctuary of Our Lady of Grace is a place rich in excellent works of art and craftsmanship, bringing closer the history of those generations who for centuries have tried to make their temple as magnificent as possible, defended it, and cared for it. The most important church of the Archdiocese of Lviv still needs this care. It is worth remembering and recalling the words with which one of the first researchers of the history of this temple, Count Maurycy Dzieduszycki, began his story of the Lviv Latin Rite Cathedral, published in 1872: "Every nation which has had a great past, and which feels in itself moral strength and vitality, wishing to be respected from others, should, first of all, respect itself, cherish its native spirit; develop itself on the stem from which it branched out, and so know its past thoroughly. It will treasure and carefully preserve its monuments, to which great memories and blissful feelings are attached" (M. Dzieduszycki, Lvov Cathedral Church of the Latin Rite, Lvov 1872).