The Dominican Cathedral, now the Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Eucharist, is a magnificent architectural monument of the late Baroque with its original sculptural decoration.

The Dominican Cathedral, now the Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Eucharist, is a magnificent architectural monument of the late Baroque with its original sculptural decoration.The Monastery of the Dominicans in this place was founded in the 13th century at the request of the Ukrainian Prince Lev Danilovich’s wife, the Hungarian princess Constantia, who was catholic and so she missed her faith living in a strange land.

In 1559 a real “war for bride” with the use of artillery and all the intricacies of military strategy happened in this church and on the square in front of it. The magnate Lukas Gurka sought extradition from the monastery his legitimate wife(it was he, who believed it). The girl was the richest heiress of the Commonwealth, Halshka Ostrozka, who was hiding behind the walls of the Dominican Monastery. During the military operations, the entire trade in Lviv stayed ceased for several weeks, and the annoyed king ordered to stop the war. In the end, the watercourse to the Monastery was cut, hence the siege was over: Galeshka was given to Lukas.

Because of the critical condition, the Gothic Dominican Church was pulled down in 1748. The new temple, reminiscent of the Church of St. Charles in Vienna, was constructed in the end of 1748 in late-Baroque style on the project of a military engineer and general of artillery Jan de Witt. In those days there was a good tradition to save all the valuable things that could be saved from the previous destroyed building . Nowadays in the southern part of the temple you can see the alabaster tombs of the 16th century – the memory of the ancient Gothic church, that disappeared 260 years ago.

Inside the temple there are a number of tombstones, the most valuable of which is the gravestone of Countess Dunin-Borkovsky, designed by the world-renowned Danish sculptor Bertel Torvaldsen (1816). The Lviv School of Sculptors is represented by the monument to Gauer, the Governor of Halychina, designed by Shimzer (1824). In 1880 a monument to the famous Polish artist Arthur Gröger, designed by the sculptor Gadomsky, was erected here.

In Soviet times Temple of God’s Body was closed together with many other Lviv’s churches. They organized a warehouse here, and in 1970 they opened The Museum of Religion and Atheism and installed in the middle of the temple a pendulum of Foucault, which, by its deviation, confirmed the process of rotation of the Earth. The Museum worked as a movie theater, where they lectured on atheistic themes and demonstrated atheistic popular science fiction films.

Since the 90s the Dominican Cathedral has become the Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Eucharist.