Zhovkva was designed as an ideal Renaissance town. In the late sixteenth century, Stanisław Żółkiewski, a Polish nobleman and military commander, founded it north of Lviv with a castle, a market square, churches and fortifications laid out according to the principles of the time. Later, the town was a favourite residence of King Jan III Sobieski, who defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683. The Tserkva of the Holy Trinity, a wooden church built in 1720, stands on the edge of the town, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine, inscribed in 2013.
The church is made of wood, with three domes in the Ukrainian tradition, and inside, an iconostasis of carved and gilded wood with painted icons, made by local craftsmen. The wooden churches of the region show the skill of carpenters who built them without nails, using techniques passed down for generations.
Zhovkva has a castle, a Renaissance market square with arcades, a Catholic collegiate church, a Basilian monastery, and a fortified synagogue from the seventeenth century, a reminder of the large Jewish community that lived here before the Holocaust. The town has fuel, shops and restaurants.
A practical word: Ukraine is at war, under martial law, and many governments advise against all travel there. Even in the west, air raid alerts are frequent, curfews apply, and rules can change quickly, so check official advice, your insurance and entry requirements before considering a visit. In peacetime, the roads around Lviv are generally good, with rolling hills, forests and villages, and Lviv itself, a UNESCO-listed city of churches, coffee houses and cobbled streets, is one of the most beautiful in Eastern Europe. The Polish border is close, and Polish wooden churches, such as the one at Chotyniec, can be visited on the other side.