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My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Ukraine | Monday, July 1, 2013 | 5 photos

Zhovkva is a small town of around 13,000 located 25 kilometers north of Lviv, Ukraine.
Tales of the 16th-century castle standing proud on a hilltop inspired me a lot.
Legend has it that the famous Ukrainian Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky was born here. He certainly spent some of his youth in Zhovkva with his father, who belonged to the court of the Polish nobleman Stanisław Żółkiewski, the town’s founder. The hetman, or Cossack leader, obviously valued his childhood memories. When Cossacks under Khmelnytsky’s rule were attacking Lviv, he forbade burning Zhovkva.
Żółkiewski founded the town in 1597 and fortified it to protect the Polish border from Tatar raids. But Zhovkva owes its beauty to Żółkiewski’s wife Regina. Fond of Italian cities, she insisted on borrowing from the Renaissance urban planning ideas of Italian architect Pietro Cataneo in constructing the town.
Since the Italian Renaissance masters were inspired by the beauty and perfection of the human body in their works, one can recognize the human figure in the shapes and lines of Zhovkva. In this respect, Żółkiewski’s magnificent castle is the town’s head, the square in front of it is the torso, the Saint Lavrentiy Cathedral is its heart, the stalls a stomach and the streets that start from the main square, its hands and legs.
Żółkiewski didn’t live to see Zhovkva prosper, however. The military commander was killed at the age of 73 in a battle against the Turks in 1620. His mourning widow had to sell all her treasures to buy her husband’s head from the invaders and bring it home. It is still kept in the Saint Lavrentiy Cathedral.
You can almost feel the ghosts of those famous inhabitants following you through the town’s streets and squares. Stones in the fortified city walls, that ressemble skulls, as well as flocks of ravens add to the somber atmosphere.
Zhovkva was said to be the favorite residence of Polish King John III Sobieski. According to legend, when a cradle holding the infant king was put atop of the sarcophagus of his great-grandfather Żółkiewski in Zhovkva, the cover of the sarcophagus cracked, symbolizing that a hero had been born to avenge his death. Under Sobieski’s rule in the 17th century, Zhovkva experienced its most prosperous years.
Over 400 years have brought numerous changes to Zhovkva, making the town an interesting wrinkle in western Ukraine’s history. Nowadays, pubs stand next to the old cathedrals, cyclists fill the main square rather than sauntering Polish noblemen, and children play on the defensive walls where soldiers once fought.
Despite this, Zhovkva has kept its majestic spirit of old glory. It takes you from the present and throws you back into an era of noble knights and bloody battles – even if they are no more than legends now.