The Dominican Church, now the Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Eucharist, is a magnificent monument of the late Baroque; it is adorned with original sculptures.
The Dominican Monastery was founded here in the 13th century upon the request of the wife of Ukrainian Prince Lev Danylovych - the Hungarian Princess Constance, a Catholic, who missed her religion being far from home. A Gothic church stood here from the 15th until the middle of the 18th century.
In 1559, a true war for the bride, using artillery and all the subtleties of military strategy, flared up in this church and on the opposite square . The magnate Lukasz Gurka sought the expulsion of his legitimate (as he believed) wife from the monastery. Halshka Ostrozka, the wealthiest heiress of Rzeczpospolita, had found asylum in the Dominican Monastery. During the military actions all trade in Lviv ceased for several weeks, so the exasperated king ordered a stop to the fighting. A water-pipe leading to the monastery was severed, and this put an end to the siege: Halshka was surrendered to Lukasz.
In 1748, the Gothic Dominican Church was dismantled because it was in bad disrepair. In 1748-1764, a new church resembling the Karlskirche in Viennawas built in the late Baroque style; it was designed by the military engineer and artillery general Jan de Witt. At the time tradition required that everything valuable from the previous church be preserved.. As a result, today we can view the alabaster gravestone dating back to the 16th century – a reminder of the old Gothic church that vanished 260 years ago.
