The square was laid out in the mid-14th century when the Polish king Casimir III the Great refounded Lviv south of the older settlement. The original buildings were Gothic, but a catastrophic fire on June 3, 1527 destroyed most of the city. What rose from the ashes was Renaissance Lviv -- a city rebuilt in the Italian-influenced style that wealthy merchants and foreign-born residents brought with them. A few Gothic remnants survived: a vault in tenement house number 24 and a portal in number 25. Everything else was new, funded by trading families from across Europe who stamped their origins on the facades. In 1825, the Town Hall tower burned, and the adjacent houses were demolished to make way for a replacement designed by architects J. Markl and F. Trescher, completed in 1835 with the tower that still commands the square.

Each side of the square reads like a chapter in a European history textbook. On the east, the Black House -- built at the end of the 16th century for Italian tax collector Tomas Alberti -- has become one of Lviv's most famous buildings, its sandstone facade darkened by centuries of weathering into the color that gives it its name. Nearby stands the King John III Sobieski Palace, originally built in 1580 for Greek merchant Konstanty Korniakt, where another Polish king, Wladyslaw IV Vasa, recovered from smallpox in 1634. The Lubomirski Palace on the eastern side, a Rococo creation from 1763 by architect Jan de Witte, served as the seat of Austrian governors of Galicia between 1771 and 1821 before passing to the Ukrainian organization Prosvita.

The western side holds its own surprises. The Renaissance Scholz-Wolf House at number 23, built in 1570 for a Silesian family, features a sculpture of the Baptism of Christ on its second floor. In the house next door, number 24, the Russian tsar Peter the Great stayed in 1707. The Heppner House at number 28, built in 1510, is known for its extravagant decoration: twenty carved lions stare down from its Renaissance facade. On the northern side, number 36 once housed Prince Jozef Poniatowski, who lived there from 1784 to 1785. And at number 45, Under the Deer, the Atlas Coffeehouse became a legendary meeting place during the interwar period, drawing artists and writers including Bruno Schulz, Jan Kasprowicz, and Jozef Wittlin.

At each corner of the square stands a fountain from 1793, probably designed by Hartman Witwer, with sculptures of Greek mythological figures: Neptune, Diana, Amphitrite, and Adonis. The choice of pagan deities for a square surrounded by Christian churches and Jewish communities speaks to the cosmopolitan self-image that Lviv cultivated -- a city that saw itself as part of the broader European tradition, classical references and all. The fountains originally served as wells, the decorative mythological figures sitting atop essential infrastructure. They still do their work as landmarks, orienting visitors who might otherwise lose their bearings amid the visual density of the surrounding facades.

In 1998, Rynok Square and the surrounding Old Town were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- recognition of what the square had been accumulating, layer by layer, since the 14th century. A major pavement restoration was carried out in 2006, but the square's function has scarcely changed. The tourist information center sits on the square, offering maps and guides in English, German, Polish, and Russian. Cafes fill the ground floors of buildings where Moldavian princes once knelt. The Black House has served as part of the Historic City Museum since 1926. What began as a marketplace remains one -- trading now in coffee, culture, and the kind of architectural spectacle that makes visitors stop on the cobblestones, look up, and count the lions.