Lviv, Ukraine

Lviv is a city of roughly 720,000 residents in western Ukraine, located about 80 kilometers from the Polish border. King Danylo of Galicia founded the settlement in 1256 and named it after his son Lev, beginning nearly eight centuries of recorded urban history. The UNESCO-listed Old Town covers 120 hectares around the 1356 Rynok Square, where 44 colorful townhouses line the perimeter alongside the 1360 Latin Cathedral and the 1298 Armenian Cathedral. The 18th-century cobbled streets hold coffee houses dating to the 1780s and the site where Ignacy Łukasiewicz and Jan Zeh first lit a kerosene street lamp in 1853. What survives beneath that layered stonework still surprises the people who walk it each morning.