Yavoriv

Yavoriv [Яворів; Javoriv]. Map: IV-4. A town (2013 pop 12,905) on the Shklo River and a raion center in Lviv oblast. It was first mentioned in a historical document in 1408, when it was under Polish rule. The town developed into a prosperous manufacturing and trading center on the Lviv–Jarosław trade route, and in 1569 it was granted the rights of Magdeburg law. After being captured by anti-Polish rebels in 1648, during the Cossack-Polish War, the town was retaken and fortified by its Polish owner. With the partition of Poland in 1772, it was annexed by Austria. Many German colonists settled there. In the 19th century Yavoriv became a county center. The development of the railways ushered in its economic decline. The town maintained its reputation for fine handicrafts, however. In the interwar period it was under Polish rule. Today the town is an industrial center with a plastics and a canning factory. It has a historical and an ethnographic museum and two wooden churches, the Dormition Church (17th century) and the Church of the Nativity of Christ, with a bell tower (1760).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]