Once when I was walking in the city I looked up and got dumbfounded: I saw a life-sized white horse under the roof of a two-storied building! When I got home a called several acquaintances including photographers. It turned out that nobody heard about the horse though many came to the building at the corner of Bibliotechna and Doroshenka Streets next to St. Maria Magdalena Cathedral [now the House of Organ and Chamber Music. – Author].
“This building is very old,” Ilko LEMKO, expert in history of Lviv told The Day. “It is known as the ‘Arsenal of Sieniawski Family.’ It was built in 1639, designed by the Lviv architect and military engineer Pawel Grodzicki for the crown hetman Adam Sieniawski. The ground floor stone walls have been preserved till now. In the 18th century the house was bought by the dukes Chartoryisky who build the stables and the riding hall nearby. In all probability, it was the time when the sculpture of the life-sized lying horse made by the famous Lviv sculptor Johan Shimzer appeared. At the beginning of the 19th century the house was bought by the counts Bavorovski who rebuilt it in 1830s-1840s using the plan of the architect Ignatii Khambrez (Chambray) in the classical Biedermeier style and transformed it into the museum and the library that opened for the public in 1990. By the way, now the Art Department of the Lviv-based Vasyl Stephanyk Scientific Library is situated there.”
According to Lemko, horses are not a rarity in Lviv. In particular, they can be seen on Semenskys-Levytskys Palace in Pekarska Street, 19 adorned by two horse heads. However, the most numerous animals on the buildings in Lviv are lions. Lemko says that nobody has ever calculated them, that is why, according to different information, there are three to five thousand lions on the old Lviv buildings. The second place is taken by the eagles (this bird featured on the Polish national emblem). There are seven hundred to one thousand of them in the city. By the way, in the Soviet time the eagles on the fronts of buildings were left untouched whereas they started destroying them little by little since Ukraine gained its independence. The most known ruined eagles were on the building in Sichovykh Striltsiv Street, 12 where the fast-food restaurant Puzata Khata is situated. It is the famed former apartment house of the banker Moisei Rohatyn designed by Roman Felinsky in 1911-13 and on the building of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Svientsitsky Street. In Lviv there is also a peacock on the weather vane of the semi-detached houses in Kotliarevsky and Nechui-Levytsky Streets. They called the houses “Pid Pavoiu” [Under the Peacock. – Ed.] because of the weather vane. The windows of the house situated in the Rynok Square, 3 are decorated with the dolphins which symbolized the successful commerce since the house was owned by a merchant. Snakes, swans, cats, pigeons, and owls can be seen on the fronts of the buildings in Lviv. “That is why it would be interesting to make a special reference book of the fauna on the fronts of the Lvivbuildings,” Lemko says.
