Lviv

Travellers approaching the western Ukraine with apprehension will be relieved to discover that Lviv has eluded the pockmarks that disfigure many ex-Soviet cities.

There's little in this historic city to suggest the depressed and downtrodden communist years: the cafés are packed, the cuisine tasty and plentiful, and the architecture still pays audacious homage to the city's regal past as a Polish and Habsburg city of culture and commerce.

Romantics will enjoy riding the clanking trams and sifting through Soviet Army memorabilia at the flea markets in the Old Town. Gourmands can gorge themselves on sturgeon, Baltic caviar and wild Carpathian mushrooms, while bargain-hunters will marvel at the knockdown prices of all of the above.

Most spectacular, however, are the city's churches, cathedrals and townhouses which encompass a staggering range of faiths and periods, from the 14th-century Gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral in Rynok Square, to the oriental Armenian houses on Bulitsa Virmenska, and the extravagance of the Viennese-style Lviv Opera House.

The sumptuous mansions along Prospekt Svobody stand testimony to an era when the city was one of the most cosmopolitan and affluent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its period of plenty only ended with the arrival of the Nazis in WWII, followed by the Soviets who sent a large portion of the city's inhabitants to Siberian work camps.

Today, over a decade since Ukrainian independence, the tourists and traders have returned, and Lviv is edging back towards the West. For those who hold fond memories for the Prague of the early 1990s - cheap as chips and unblemished by large-scale tourism - you know where to go (quickly).