Zhovkva

Zhovkva is a city in Lviv Raion of Lviv Oblast in western Ukraine and hosts the administration of the Zhovkva urban hromada. It was founded in 1597 as a private fortified town named Zolkiew by the hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski, one of the leading military commanders of Poland, who built it on an ideal Renaissance city plan much like Zamosc, and it received town rights in 1603. Its position at the crossing of important trade routes, together with the patronage of noble families and the royal family, made it a major center of culture, politics, commerce and manufacturing in the early modern period, and King John III Sobieski used it as a royal residence. A population of Poles, Armenians, Ukrainians and Jews lived there, and a Jewish printing press opened in 1693. The preserved old town keeps a former castle and several churches and synagogues, and the population was about 13,852 in a 2022 estimate.