Museum of Ethnography and Crafts

The Museum of Ethnography and Artistic Crafts, a division of the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, is one of the largest museums of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. It was formed in 1951 by merging the Ethnography Museum of the Lviv branch of the Academy of Sciences with the Lviv State Museum of Artistic Industry. Its holdings comprise about 72,000 items - over 44,000 ethnographic and over 28,000 in artistic crafts - including one of the richest collections of Ukrainian folk dress, Coptic textiles, furniture from the 15th to the 20th century, ceramics, glass, metalwork and clocks. The museum occupies the spectacular former Galician Savings Bank (1891, architect Julian Zachariewicz) at 15 Svobody Avenue, a neo-Renaissance building crowned by a dome with an allegorical sculpture.