ENGLISH TOURS LVIV
The availability of language options when one is looking to book tours in Lviv is limited. Audioguided tours are of course multilingual, but audioguided tours are something we cannot recommend. That comes from experience in Italy, specifically the Vatican Museums, infamous for it's famously appalling app.
Audioguides are generally underwhelming and not worth their low price point, you won't find audioguided tours on our website. We recently declined an offer from an app developer who thought that In Lviv Tours as a downloadable audioguide would work. No.
Live person guides in European destinations give tours in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian, but in Lviv, these language options are still somewhat thin on the ground.
Using Kraków as an example, being the closest city to Lviv where tourism is well established, it's normal to be able to join tours in most European languages plus russian, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
With the obvious exceptions of russian, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinese, tours in Lviv will soon embrace many languages as visitor numbers increase year on year. Our tours are led in English only, but this will change in future.
For now, tourists in Lviv are mostly Ukrainian, many of whom are refugees. Domestic tourism is booming in the most unlikely of circumstances. A smattering of British, European and American travellers are venturing across the border but numbers are not worthy of note. Most of these people are volunteers or experienced travellers, undeterred by adverse geopolitical conditions.
We hope that sooner rather than later, Lviv City Council, privately owned establishments and venues as well as tour operators, will react to inbound tourism and level up language options.
This must encompass everything from apps (very few Ukrainian apps have an English language option) and info points, to menus (it's not easy to find a menu in any language other than Ukrainian) and tour guides.
Everything is already improving, it's a process. About menus in English, it does seem that everyone has given up, even on the simple task of printing menus. Now it's "scan our QR code to order" - in Ukrainian. Just make sure you have an app that translates your screen.
About a decade ago, it was forbidden for any business in Lviv old town to display their trading name or spot promotions in front of their premises in a foreign language. It had to be in Ukrainian. Wow.
It does seem as though the morons who passed that law are long gone. Perhaps the idea was to remove the russian language from Lviv, good idea, but russian is just one language of more than 7,000 in the world.
Back to Lviv tours in English, we try to intersperse all our tours with an introduction to Ukrainian. In this way, you will leave with at least a basic vocabulary relating to where you have been, what you have seen, eaten, what you drank etc. In Lviv, the latter activity can be difficult to remember in any language!
On Rynok Square, just like on squares in European capitals, there are promoters asking passers-by if they would like to join a group tour.
These tours are in Ukrainian and sometimes Polish (some say russian language tours have been banned). They have a reputation for being rather fleeting, and we've heard that those who join them get an hour of lukewarm anecdotes at best.
We're still trying to work out why Ukrainians flock to join group tours and are in love with bus excursions. Private tours are really not their thing at all.
Perhaps they're more gregarious than people of other nationalities. It's not about cost, as many Ukrainians are wealthy on the quiet.
Putting distractions aside, the sensible way to get a Lviv tour in English is by booking online in advance. If the contact you write to on WhatsApp or by e-mail is a native English speaker, then all the better.
We recently assessed the Ukrainian tour guides who lead our private Lviv tours in English and specifically, how they don't just deliver what they know in their second language.
Our guides have been studying British culture as well as the language, so they are better than well prepared to host British travellers above and beyond the fine art of guiding. In our opinion, a cultural connection between client and guide is as important as the activity per se.
If you are reading this from the US, don't fret, we also have guides who studied American English in your country before returning home to work in tourism.
✍ by Cubist on October 11th, 2025.