During the Austro-Hungarian period, which lasted from 1772 to 1918, the city, the heart of eastern Galicia, was officially known by its German name. From 1918 to 1939 it was the third-biggest city in Poland. Then it was taken by the Soviets, followed by the Nazis, and the Soviets returned in 1944. Like Thessaloniki in Greece and Vilnius in Lithuania, it is one of those European cities whose population today is so different from what it used to be that few people who live here nowadays can say that their families lived here before 1945.
