Damn rock

A good place for outdoor recreation not far from Lviv. There is a dense forest around the rocks. Climbers often train on the rocks. Quite often companies rest there (not all of them clean up) and there is a place for photos. It is located within the Lychakiv district of Lviv, south of the village of Lysynychi and west of the town of Vynnyky. The area is 353 hectares. It is subordinated to the State Enterprise "Lviv Forestry", Vynnyky Forestry. The main tasks of the reserve are to preserve valuable beech, oak, hornbeam and beech-pine forests.

The reserve was established in 1984. The entire territory is characterized by picturesque landscapes. If you look at old maps, you will see that there was a quarry there. In 2018, Polish professor Krzysztof Duda digitized the photographic heritage of Lviv photographer Józef Treśka. The stones from the Chortovi Sklyky were used to build houses and roads in Lviv. In 1911, a pyramid with a cross was built in the village of Lysynychi, dedicated to Taras Shevchenko (one of the first monuments to the poet in Ukraine). The bust was installed later in 1961.

The Devil's Rocks served as a guard outpost in princely times. In the mid-19th century, Isidor Sharanevych, a researcher of the history of the principality, argued that the original Lviv had to lie on the Devil's Rock because it was the highest place from which to see everything. The rocks are up to 20 meters high. Of course, the rocks were bigger, but for centuries they were quarried for stones. In the vicinity of the cliff, units of the Vostok group fought in the winter of 1918, and trenches have remained since then. Ludwik Zieliński wrote that there were ruins of a pagan castle on the territory dating back to the 17th century. In the second half of the 19th century, nuns built a monastery under the rock. Local lore sources mention the first monastery, built in 1595 by the Sharipovski sisters from Kolomyia.

Historians, local historians, and tourists are interested in the mountain. There is an observation deck on one of the rocks. The Devil's Rock was visited by cultural and scientific figures, famous Galician educators, and members of the Russian Trinity. A chronicle from Oleh Karelin's book The Destruction of Lviv by the Lviv publishing house Kamenyar says that the Hill caught fire because of a wicked woman, and the flames were so intense that the whole land could see the fire, including Lviv, and the Belz fields could be seen because the fire was so intense.