iocese, which since 1375 had been in Halych. In 1444 Lviv was granted with the staple right, which resulted in city's growing prosperity and wealth, as it became one of major trading centres on the merchant routes between Central Europe and Black Sea region. It was also transformed into one of the main fortresses of the kingdom.
As Lviv prospered it became religiously and ethnically diverse with Germans, Poles, Ukrainians (Ruthenians), Armenians and Jews being the most important ethnicities living within the city. With passing time many had become polonized and assimilated into the dominant Polish culture.
In 1572 the first publisher of books in Ukraine, Ivan Fedorov, a graduate of the University of Krak�w, settled in Lviv for a brief period. The city became a significant centre for Eastern orthodoxy with the establishment of an orthodox brotherhood, a Greek-Slavonic school and a printery which published the first full versions of the Bible in Church Slavonic in 1580.
The 17th century brought invading armies of Swedes, Hungarians, Turks, Russians and Cossacks to its gates. In 1648 an army of Cossacks and Crimean Tatars besieged Lviv. The city was not sacked due to its beauty and the fact that the leader of the revolution Bohdan Khmelnytsky studied there and did not want to see it ruined. As a result a ransom of 250 000 ducat was paid and the Cossacks marched west towards Zamo??. Lviv was the only major city in Poland which was not captured. In 1672 it was surrounded by the Ottomans who failed to conquer it. Lviv was captured for the first time by a foreign army in 1704 when Swedish troops under King Charles XII entered the city after a short siege.
Habsburg Empire
In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, the region was annexed by Austria. Known in German as Lemberg, the city became the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. The city grew dramatically under Austrian rule, increasing in population from
