Sights Hotel Optima Collection Park Hotel Ivano-Frankivsk

Ivano-Frankivsk - is the cultural center of the Carpathians, one of the largest cities of Galicia. There are no subways and even trams, but they are not needed, this is an ideal city for walking - a small and magical one. The city is full of sentimental fragments of European architecture, opens a rich collection of sacred painting of the art museum and plunges into the atmosphere of galleries and numerous souvenir shops selling unique items of folk artists.

One of the main attractions of the city is the Town Hall - the only one in Ukraine topped with a gilded dome in the form of a military helmet, and the clock on it is performed by 12 Ukrainian melodies. The height of the structure is 49.5 meters. Today the Town Hall is an ornament of the city, but it has changed its appearance many times in more than 300 years. It was first built in 1672 of wood and stone. It was a nine-storey tower in the style of the late Renaissance in which the city government was located, it was also used as a fire tower. In 1695 a new stone town hall was built, which became the highest building in the city. It changed appearance more than once after that. The Poles rebuilt this modern building in the years 1929-1932 to a complete unrecognizability.

In the Town Hall there is a local history museum, which is an outstanding scientific, cultural and educational institution of the Carpathian region. There are exposition departments: nature, history, folk art, archeology.

Another interesting place visited by residents of the city and tourists is the fortress gallery "Bastion", located near the ruins of the city defense wall - one of the main historical monuments of the city. This shopping and entertainment center got its name in honor of one of the bastions of the Stanislavsky fortress, which was restored in 2002. “Bastion” is without exaggeration one of the main cultural places of Ivano-Frankivsk. "Bastion" includes a cafe, restaurant, shops, and a permanent exhibition of paintings and photographs.  

One of the most beautiful and oldest streets of Ivano-Frankivsk - Shevchenko street will not leave indifferent. It has become a kind of open-air museum. Blacksmiths from around the world in celebration of the day of the city presented the city with five beautiful forged sculptures, which became another addition to the already existing many attractions of the city.

Walking along Shevchenko Street, you will enter to the City Park of Culture and Rest. Shevchenko, which is a monument of landscape art of local importance (since 1972). This is a kind of nature museum, in which, apart from local species, exotic trees and shrubs grow, which were brought in earlier from the nurseries of Europe and America. Here you can see the ginkgo - the only representative of the ginkgo family and the oldest ancestor of the gymnosperms, preserved to our days, a rare tulip tree and many more exotic plants for our places.

The city, as if created for recreation, there are many original cafes, stylish bars, restaurants and establishments of traditional Ukrainian, as well as Galician cuisine. Being a part of big Ukraine, Frankivsk is a unique territory. This is primarily the city of Galicia, which for many centuries belonged to a different civilization than the rest of Ukraine.