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Flag of Ternopil
Coat of arms of Ternopil
Coat of arms
Ternopil is located in Ukraine
Location within Ukraine
Coordinates: 49°34′N 25°36′E﻿ / ﻿49.567°N 25.600°E﻿ / 49.567; 25.600Coordinates: 49°34′N 25°36′E﻿ / ﻿49.567°N 25.600°E﻿ / 49.567; 25.600
Country  Ukraine
Oblast Ternopil Oblast
Raion Ternopil Raion
 • Mayor Sergiy Nadal (All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda")[1]
 • Total 72 km2 (27.8 sq mi)
Population (2010)
 • Total 218,641
 • Density 3,831/km2 (9,920/sq mi)
Time zone CET (UTC+2)
 • Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+3)
Area code(s) +380 352

Ternopil (Ukrainian: Тернопіль, translit. Ternopil’, Polish & German: Tarnopol, Russian: Тернополь, translit. Ternopol’), is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Western Ukraine and the historical region of Galicia. It is served by Ternopil Airport.

In 2010, the population was 218,641.

Administrative status[edit]

The city is the administrative center of the Ternopil Oblast (province), as well as of the surrounding Ternopil Raion (district) within the oblast. However, Ternopil is a city of oblast subordinance, thus being subject directly to the oblast authorities rather than to the raion administration housed in the city itself.


The Ternopil Castle rebuilt in the 19th century as a palace
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary (former Dominican Church)
Hram UGKC Ternopil'
Ukraїna misto Ternopil' UGKC

The city was founded in 1540 by Jan Amor Tarnowski as a military stronghold and a castle. In 1544 the Ternopil Castle was constructed and repelled its first Tatar attacks. In 1548 Ternopil was granted city rights by king Sigismund I the Old. In 1567 the city passed to the Ostrogski family. In 1575 it was plundered by the Tatars. In 1623 the city passed to the Zamoyski family.

In the 17th century the town was almost wiped from the face of the Earth in the Khmelnytsky Uprising which drove out or killed most of its Jewish residents. Ternopil was almost completely destroyed by the Turks and Tatars in 1675 and rebuilt by Aleksander Koniecpolski but did not recover its previous glory until it passed to Marie Casimire, the wife of king Jan III Sobieski in 1690. The city was later sacked for the last time by Tatars in 1694, and twice by Russians in the course of the Great Northern War in 1710 and the War of the Polish Succession in 1733. In 1747 Józef Potocki invited the Dominicanes and founded the beautiful late-baroque Dominican Church (today the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary of the Ternopil-Zboriv eparchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church). The city was thrice looted during the confederation of Bar (1768–1772), by the confederates themselves, by the king's army and by Russians. In 1770 it was further devastated by an outbreak of smallpox.

In 1772 the city came under Austrian rule. In 1809 the city came under Russian rule, which created Ternopol krai there. In 1815 the city (then with 11,000 residents) returned to the Austrian rule in accordance with the Congress of Vienna. In 1820 Jesuits expelled from Polatsk by the Russians established a gymnasium in Ternopil. In 1870 a rail line connected Ternopil with Lviv, accelerating the city's growth. At that time Ternopil had a population of about 25,000.

Austrian postal card in Polish version cancelled in 1880
A ship "Heroy Tantsorow" on the Ternopil Lake

20th Century[edit]

The region was part of Habsburg Galicia and was an ethnic mix of mainly Roman Catholic Poles, Greek Catholic Ruthenians, and Jews. Intermarriage between Poles and Ruthenians was common. During World War I the city passed from German and Austrian forces to Russia several times. In 1917 it was burnt down by fleeing Russian forces. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the city was proclaimed part of the West Ukrainian People's Republic on 11 November 1918. After Polish forces captured Lwow during the Polish-Ukrainian War, Ternopol became the country's temporary capital (22 November to 30 December 1918).[2] After the act of union between Western-Ukrainian Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), Ternopol formally passed under the UPR's control. On 15 July 1919 the city was captured[2] by Polish forces. In 1920 the exiled Ukrainian government of Symon Petlura accepted Polish control of Ternopol and of the entire area after receiving the assurance of Josef Pilsudski, the Lithuanian born Field Marshal of the Polish Army, that there would be no peace with the Russians without creating a Ukrainian state. In July and August 1920 the Red Army captured Ternopol in the course of the Polish-Soviet War. The city then served as the capital of the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. Although the Poles and their Ukrainian allies badly defeated the Russians on the battle field and the Russians had offered to cede Ukraine and Belarus, Polish politicians in Warsaw refused to honor Pilsudski's promise. By the terms of the Riga treaty, the Soviets and Poles effectively partitioned Ukraine. For the next 19 years, the ethnically mixed Ternopol area remained in Polish control.

From 1922 to September 1939, Ternopol served as the capital of the Tarnopol Voivodeship that consisted of 17 powiats. According to the official 1939 Statistical Yearbook of Poland, Ukrainian speaking Ruthenians accounted for less than half of the voivodship's population as ethnic Poles and Jews also lived in the region in large numbers.[citation needed] Ukrainian Nationalism was supported by the militant Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists whose local Ternopol branch was led by Roman Paladiychuk and Taras Stetsko, the future leader of OUN.

After the September 17, 1939 the Red Army invaded Eastern Poland, in furtherance of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and contrary to the Soviet-Polish non-aggression treaty and captured Ternopol, which was renamed Ternopil and incorporated into their Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets made it their first priority to destroy the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and exterminate its leaders.[citation needed] Mass arrests, torture and executions of Ukrainians and Poles followed. The Soviets also carried out mass deportations of the "enemies of the working class" to Kazakhstan. In practice, this translated into members of the former state administration, police, border service, land and business owners.

In 1941 the city was occupied by the Germans who continued exterminating the population by murdering the Jews and sending Ukrainians as forced labour to Germany. In the years 1942-1943 the Polish Armia Krajowa was active opposing Nazi rule and defending ethnic Poles from violence from Ukrainian Nationalists. During the Soviet reoccupation in March and April 1944, the city was encircled. In March 1944 the city was declared a fortified place by Adolf Hitler, to be defended until the last round was shot. The stiff German resistance caused extensive use of heavy artillery by the Red Army, resulting in the complete destruction of the city and killing of nearly all German defenders (55 survivors out of 4,500). Unlike many other occasions, where the Germans had practised a scorched earth policy during their withdrawal from territories of the Soviet Union, the devastation was caused directly by the hostilities.[3]

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the ethnic Polish population of the Ternopol region was forcibly deported to former German territory near Wrocław (Breslau) as part of Soviet ethnic cleansing of modern day Ukraine. After World War II Ternopil was rebuilt in typically Soviet style. Only a few buildings were reconstructed.

Since 1991 Ternopil has been a part of independent Ukraine, along with other cities of western Ukraine. Ternopil has became an important center of Ukrainian national revival.[citation needed]

Jewish Ternopil[edit]

Polish Jews settled in Ternopil beginning at its founding and soon formed a majority of the population. During the 16th and 17th centuries there were 300 Jewish families in the city. The Great Synagogue of Ternopil was built in Gothic Survival style between 1622 and 1628.[4] Among the towns destroyed by Bohdan Khmelnytsky during his march from Zolochiv through Galicia was Tarnopol, the large Jewish population of which carried on an extensive trade. Shortly afterward, however, when the Cossacks had been subdued by John III of Poland, the town began to prosper anew, and its Jewish population exceeded all previous figures. It may be noted that Hasidism at this time dominated the community, which opposed any introduction of Western culture. During the troubled times in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the city was stormed (1770) by the adherents of the Confederacy of Bar, who massacred many of its inhabitants, especially the Jews.

After the second partition of Poland, Ternopil came under Austrian domination and Joseph Perl was able to continue his efforts to improve the condition of the Jews there, which he had begun under Russian rule. In 1813 he established a Jewish school which had as its chief object the instruction of Jewish youth in German as well as in Hebrew and in various other subjects. Controversy between the traditional Hasidim and the modernising Maskilim which this school caused, resulted four years later in a victory for the latter, whereupon the institution received official recognition and was placed under communal control. Starting in 1863, the school policy was gradually modified by Polish influences, and very little attention was given to instruction in German. The Tempel für Geregelten Gottesdienst, opened by Perl in 1819, also caused dissensions within the community, and its rabbi, Samuel Judah Löb Rapoport, was forced to withdraw. This dispute also was eventually settled in favour of the Maskilim. As of 1905, the Jewish community numbered 14,000 in a total population of 30,415. Jews took control of the active import/export trade with Russia conducted through the border city of Pidvolochysk.

In 1941, 500 Jews were murdered on the grounds of Ternopil's Christian cemetery by local inhabitants using weapons borrowed from a German army camp.[5] According to interviews conducted by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Patrick Desbois, some of the bodies were decapitated.[5] In September 1941, the Germans announced the establishment of a Jewish ghetto in the city. In the winter of 1941/42, mortality in the ghetto escalated to such a degree that the Judenrat was constrained to bury the dead in a common grave. Between August 1942 to June 1943 there were 5 "selections" that depleted the Jewish population of the Ghetto by sending the Jews to Belzec extermination camp. A few hundred Jews from Tarnopol and its vicinity attempted to survive by hiding within the town limits. Many were denounced to the Germans, including some 200 people shortly before the Soviets liberated the area. A number of Jews survived by hiding with Poles.[6] A monument in Memory of the Holocaust victims was built at Piotrovsky Yar in 1996.[7]

On September 19, 2012 the monument was desecrated, in what seems to be an anti-Semitic act.[7]


Ternopil has a moderate continental climate with cold winters and warm summers.

Climate data for Ternopil (1949-2011)
Record high °C (°F) 12.2
Average high °C (°F) −1.9
Daily mean °C (°F) −4.4
Average low °C (°F) −7.3
Record low °C (°F) −31.6
Precipitation mm (inches) 33.0
Avg. precipitation days 19.5 18.2 16.3 11.3 11.0 11.4 9.6 8.1 10.0 10.1 15.2 19.4 160.1
 % humidity 85.8 84.3 78.6 67.7 67.1 71.6 73.6 73.0 75.8 79.6 86.2 87.0 77.5
Source: Climatebase.ru[8]


Universities include:

Notable residents[edit]

International relations[edit]

Twin towns – Sister cities[edit]

Ternopil is twinned with:

See also[edit]

References and notes[edit]

  1. ^ (Ukrainian) Мер Тернополя продає побачення з собою, Ukrayinska Pravda (28 December 2011)
  2. ^ a b The Jewish and German population accepted the new Ukrainian state, but the Poles started the military campaign against the Ukrainian authority. [...]. On November 11, 1918 following bloody fighting, the Polish forces captured Lwow. The government of the WUPR moved to Ternopol and from the end of December the Council and the Government of the WUPR were located in Ivano-Frankivsk.
    (Ukrainian) West Ukrainian People's Republic in the "Dovidnyk z istoriï Ukraïny" (A hand-book on the History of Ukraine), 3-Volumes, Kyiv, 1993-1999, ISBN 5-7707-5190-8 (t. 1), ISBN 5-7707-8552-7 (t. 2), ISBN 966-504-237-8 (t. 3).
  3. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed.); Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg - Volume 8: Die Ostfront 1943/44 - Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten; Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt München 2007; ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2
  4. ^ Sergey R. Kravtsov, "Gothic Survival in Synagogue Architecture of Ruthenia, Podolia and Volhynia in the 17th–18th Centuries," Architectura. Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Baukunst/ Journal of the History of Architecture, vol. 1 (2005), 70.
  5. ^ a b Talking with the willing executioners
  6. ^ "Tarnopol Historical Background". Yad Vashem. Retrieved 9 March 2014. 
  7. ^ a b "ЕВРЕЙСКИЕ НОВОСТИ". http://eajc.org/. Retrieved 27 October 2012. 
  8. ^ "Ternopil, Ukraine Climate Data". Climatebase. Retrieved January 21, 2013. 
  9. ^ http://20minut.ua/Новини-Тернополя/news/153824
  10. ^ "Kult magazine#6". Issuu.com. 2012-05-12. Retrieved 2013-03-12. 
  11. ^ "Зорян Безкоровайний, гурт "Nameless":" ХАЙ НЕ МІЛІЮТЬ ДЖЕРЕЛА НАШОЇ ЛЮБОВІ!!! :)" (+Фото) | Молоде радіо - Хвиля української музики :: Українська онлайн-радіостанція". Molode.com.ua. 2009-11-12. Retrieved 2013-03-12. 
  12. ^ ""Nameless": у злагоді з собою і світом " Новини Чернівці: Інформаційний портал газети "Молодий буковинець"". Molbuk.ua. Retrieved 2013-03-12. 
  13. ^ "В Любові І … В "Неймлесі"". Paramoloda.ua. Retrieved 2013-03-12. 
  14. ^ Latino America Shoegaze. "Musica Media". Ourmusicmedia.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2013-03-12. 
  15. ^ zinecanibal@hotmail.com (2012-06-22). "Canibal Vegetariano: Unidos em prol da boa música: Ummagma e Nameless". Canibalvegetariano77.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2013-03-12. 
  16. ^ Hodara, Susan (October 26, 2008). "Communities; Cities Find Sisters Abroad". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-10-26. 
  17. ^ "Elbląg - Podstrony / Miasta partnerskie". Elbląski Dziennik Internetowy (in Polish). Archived from the original on 2011-03-15. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  18. ^ "Elbląg - Miasta partnerskie". Elbląg.net (in Polish). Retrieved 2013-08-01. 

External links[edit]