Drohobych

Drohobych was founded at the end of the eleventh century as an important trading post and transport node between Kievan Rus' and the lands to the West of Rus'. After extinction of the local Ruthenian dynasty and subsequent incorporation of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia into the Polish Kingdom by 1349, from the fifteenth century the city developed as a mercantile and saltworks centre. Drohobych became part of the Habsburg Empire in 1772 after the first partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the mid-nineteenth century it became Europe's largest oil extraction center, which significantly contributed to its rapid development. In the renascent, interwar Poland it was the center of a county within the Lwów Voivodeship. As an outcome of World War II, the city was incorporated into the Ukrainian part of the Soviet Union, which in 1991 became the independent Ukraine.

The city was the birthplace of such well-known personalities as Elisabeth Bergner, Yuriy Drohobych (Kotermak), Ivan Franko and Bruno Schulz. The city has several oil refineries. The Drohobych saltworks are considered to be the oldest in Europe.