The Scent of a City: Notes from Lviv
English
Lviv smells like stories whispered in old stairwells, like candle smoke in quiet churches, like coffee simmering on hot sand. I arrived in this city not just as a visitor, but as someone listening—to cobblestones underfoot, to the way a bakery smells when it rains, to the perfume of lilacs drifting over rooftops shaped by centuries of change.
This city once belonged to the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, then to Poland, then to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s called Lwów in Polish, Lemberg in German, Leopolis in Latin. Each layer left its trace: in architecture, language—and scent.
There’s a particular kind of fragrance here that blends the sacred and the sensual. In the morning, it’s fresh bread and sun-warmed stone. By afternoon, it becomes beeswax, tobacco, ink, roasted apples. The churches exhale frankincense and dust; the cafés—cinnamon and chocolate.
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