People had settled at the industrial part of Lvov from time immemorial. In the Stone and Bronze Ages the banks of the Poltva had attracted many a tribe. Late in the 11th and early in the 12th centuries the Slavs established a settlement on the summit of the hill, which later became part of Kiev Rus (also writen as Kyivan Rus). The settlement developed into a principality Zvenigorod, later called Galicia and finally, at the end of the 12th century, the joint Galicia-Volhynian Principality, one of the most prominent Russian states at the time of feudal dissent, known for its cultural and economic development.
In the middle of the 13th century Prince Daniil Romanovich of Galicia came to these parts. It was a trying time. From the east the country was threatened by the Tartar and Mongol hordes who left nothing in their wake but ruins and ashes. Internal strife was headed by the boyar (or bolyar -a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rusian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies) opposition with its stronghold in Galichin and the “mountain land of Peremishl”.
Daniil of Galicia, an outstanding statesman and military leader of his time, did not give way to the enemy within the country or without. He sought support from the rising towns. It is surmised that the town of Lvov was founded by the Prince somewhere about the year 1250.