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Rotunda with a fountain and the figure of the Virgin Mary was built at the Sheptytsky Square to mark the 2000 years of Christianity.
Monument to Ivan Franko in the city center.
Place
I
vano Frankivsk is situated in the land of Halychyna, and the local culture clearly shows in its appearance. . We found it to be a very friendly and even charming place. When later we sha red our impressions with friends who had been to or lived in Ivano Frankivsk, we dis covered that they were of the same opinion. The town has retained much of its old appearance and
has not been badly marred by nondescript or dow nright ugly housing blocks of the soviet times. The town hall remains to be the tallest building in town. We could not figure out what actually makes the atmosphere of the town so special. There is absolutely no provinciality in it, but at the same time there is no hustle and bustle, annoyingly ty pical of any major urban centre (Ivano Frankivsk with a population of 250,000 people cannot be called a small town, but neither is it a big city). One of the first very favorable impressions for us was the price of meals in restaurants. For a gorgeously delicious dish of trout we paid two times less than we would have paid in Kyiv. Of course, it was only one, and not the most important facet of the town. A considerably greater impression was made on us by the way the locals talk. Firstly, it is very good Ukrainian, not a garbled mixture of Ukrainian and Russian that you hear so often in Kyiv, and secondly, people express themsel ves clearly and intelligently. And this observation is not limited to intellectuals only. Everybody talks like this — teachers, florists, waitresses, cab dri vers, and shop assistants. A bit of history The official date of the town’s foundation is May 7, 1662 when the town was granted self government under the Magdeburg Law. Andrzei
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