One day a pale man in black entered the church, saying he can persuade the rebellious monk in total equality of everybody. It could be heard that the men in the cell were quarrelling, and when everything quietened, there were nobody in the cell. Only a piece of parchment in the corner ... Thus was born a legend of the Black Monk, who sold his soul to the devil. And about this later on.

Lviv’s church is traditionally tripartite, with feebly marked apse, from the outside. Side naves are narrower than a central nave - it is normal for a basilica. In order to preserve at least a little bit of space, galleries-matronea were built above the side naves.

I read that Jesuit churches were recognized exactly by the matronea. Maybe it is true. Other sources report that for Jesuits were typical separate chapels on both sides of the main nave, divided by transverse walls, but not the matronea. I don’t see great difference between the truth of these two versions.

The church with matronea or without it is gigantic. Length 41 m, height - 26 m, width - 22.5 meters. Jesuits were experts in making an impression - and earning money. When several brothers of the Order first appeared in Lviv in the XVIth century, they had no property at all. Even citizens didn’t treat them too kindly ... When by an order of the Austrian Emperor, the Order was canceled (1848), the property of Lviv’s Jesuits was appraised in one million of Thalers.

A tower, which we wouldn’t see any more and which was the highest in the city was built in 1702 according to the project of Walentyn Godny demolished in 1830.

Peter’s and Paul’s church played its role even in the history of Lviv’s beer. Once there was a passage that led to Jesuits warehouses from a street, but the street was very narrow (only 4 metres), and the warehouses’ gates were opening outside that hindered passers-by. So, the nearest brewery owner filed a complaint to the magistrate, seeking to force Jesuits to brick up the passage.

To get to the church for a simple tourist is extremely difficult - hey, I'm not taking about the underground, but namely about the church! Residents and visitors of Lviv were able to receive such an opportunity during the celebration of the 750th anniversary of the city in autumn 2006 - there were plans to hold in the church a concert of classical music. The reality became an obstacle in its path: V. Stefanik’s Scientific Library of Lviv, which occupies the building for its archives, just banally didn’t have time to vacate the church from folios. Unfortunately, there is no other building in Lviv of the required size (this is more than 2 000 square meters), which could be provided to the library: the premises that were provided earlier, the library used for reading halls. This is also a necessary thing.

To whom belongs a three-storey building of Jesuit college, located close by the kostel, I do not know. The building appeared in 1723 according to the project of J. Brian, and is famous not only for magnificent baroque portal at the Teatralnaya street, with the lying knight and preserved frescoes, but also for the fact that in these walls was educated Bogdan Khmelnitsky. Educational organizations - the "strong point" of Jesuits, they provide excellent and free education, concerning the fact that it was, ahem, pro-Jesuit - so what could you expect under such circumstances?

From October 2002 began operating the sightseeing tour "Underground Lviv" (during two hours of tour for all comers is shown the underground of Jesuit church, Transfiguration Church and basements of Pharmacy-Museum, which is equipped with an alchemist’s room). The route was developed by the publishing house “The Center of Europe”. Do you think this is too extreme? Ha. There are more extreme sorts of entertainment - such as launching kayaks on the concrete underground Poltva.

Lviv’s mystics don't care a straw about all this, they put forward their own version of events. As the arguments, they cite the case, happened with one of the relatives of Vyzhytskiy, a magnate of the Potocki family, who shoot himself with a silver bullet, because considered himself to be a vampire. Now for such vampires there is an enormous choice of sites, where one can attract attention of rapturous girls, in that time these insane didn’t have such kind of outlet and had to shot themselves. Probably, unfortunate vampire hoped that silver also wouldn’t be enough to kill him...

The sarcophagus was found broken and with pressed out side wall. And they assert that it is not the work of black archaeologists, because the sarcophagus was broken from inside. Coma? Lethargy? Who knows, what happened in a life after the life of Krakow’s bishop and Lviv’s archbishop, born in 1700, in the family of Kiev’s Castellan and Polish petty bourgeois. They say that on the lid of the sarcophagus remained some strange traces - as if someone tried to get out of it ...

However, the version concerning black archeologists also should not be rejected: in the 1950's an access to the Lviv’s undergrounds was almost free (until the time when in the city was almost committed an assault on Khrushchev - and explosives installed in the area of Gorodotska street didn’t bury a large part of Lviv’s underground), so anyone could search for the treasures of Jesuits. All the more, it is known that the underground passages were used by Lviv’s thieves – they say that there was even an underground police that withdrew them into the daylight. Later the Jesuits’ underground was occupied by the druggies - during the repairs in 1997, employees of the "Snail’s" gallery removed from this place not only 20 machines of garbage, but also five buckets of syringes ...

Whether the wealth of the Order was found in the swamped with rubbish kostel, so far is unknown, but recently a funeral urn with ancient Chinese hieroglyphs had been found. Whether this funeral urn was brought to Lviv by Chinese people or by someone from Jesuits, who had visited the Celestial Empire, was unknown.

Undergrounds are opened only for 10-15 percent. Traditionally they don’t have enough money, on further investigation and clearing. Where to find the tomb of the archbishop, nobody knows. By the way, in the Jesuit’s undergrounds, among other things, were found human skeletons. Perhaps it is the remains of those who were once buried in the undercrofts of the kostel?

In the undergrounds are also presented rings, immured into the wall - a place of punishment for debtors. When the unlucky, the relatives of whom were able somehow to pay off debts, was released from here, he had also to pay Jesuits for his maintenance and two meals a day.