Velyki Mosty

Velyki Mosty is a city in Sheptytskyi Raion of Lviv Oblast in western Ukraine, and the seat of the Velyki Mosty urban hromada. Its name means Great Bridges, and it was known in Polish as Mosty Wielkie. The English article gives an estimated population of 6,286 for 2022. The settlement was a royal village founded in 1472 in the Belz Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland and received Magdeburg rights on 23 July 1549, after which it was a royal town with several privileges and the seat of a starosta. It passed to Austrian Galicia after the First Partition of Poland in 1772, and military barracks were built there in 1846. Between the wars the Central Police Academy of the Second Polish Republic was located in the town. Its large Jewish community was destroyed during the German occupation of World War II. Until 2020 it belonged to Sokal Raion, and it now has a local branch of the Association of Polish Culture of the Lviv Land.