STONE CASTLES OF WESTERN UKRAINE:CONSTRUCTION AND THE CURRENT CONDITION

The article deals with defensive structures of only one type – stone castle complexes. The purpose of this study is to compile a list of stone castles that have survived to this day in whole or in ruins on the territory of Western Ukraine, to identify the geography of their distribution, and to highlight the main stages of their emergence. The timeframe of the study is limited to the 11th-17th centuries and is justified by the fact that the first stone castles appeared on the territory of Ukraine in the 11th century, and the 17th century was the final period of construction of defensive castle structures.

During the research, it was determined that most defensive stone castles were built in the period from the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the 17th century. The peak of construction was the period from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century.

However, the real period of time for the construction of stone castles in the territory of Western Ukraine was the end of the 11th – end of the 17th century.

To understand the general situation with the state of preservation of stone castles, we have developed a classification dividing them into three main groups:
1) Preserved castles, those that have preserved their integral volumetric-spatial appearance through the centuries. They are both defensive (castles in Lutsk, Uzhgorod) and palace-like (castles in Vyshnivtsi, Olytsia). They are adapted mainly for museum spaces and are actively visited by tourists.
2) Fragmentary preserved castles - this group includes castles from which only single structures have been preserved - towers, walls or buildings, which as of today have already been restored, preserved and adapted for certain functions (castles in Zvyagel, Halych, and Letychiv).
3) Castles in a state of ruin.

The last group of objects, which is the largest in total, can be divided into three subgroups according to the degree of preservation:
I. castles in a state of ruin, which have an integral closed contour of defensive walls, preserved individual buildings and structures in a state of ruin, foundations and individual sections of the walls of lost buildings and structures (examples are castles in the areas of Stare Selo, Pniv, Zolotyi Potik, etc;)
II. castles in a state of ruin, where the perimeter of the defensive walls is torn, the foundations and individual sections of the walls of buildings and structures are preserved (examples are Kudryntsi, Sydoriv, Sataniv);
III. castles in a state of ruin, represented only by small fragments of the complex, the rest of the castle is made up of archaeological remains (examples include Lviv, Taikury, Zhvanets, Halych, Chervonohrad, etc.);

In a separate group, we distinguish castles that have been wiped off the face of the earth, which can be considered purely archaeological monuments (examples include Dunayiv, Kolomyia, Kukyziv, Sheshory, etc.).

In this study, we deal with only 88 castles that have been recorded by research, reflected in publications, and have at least a partial inventory. In percentage terms, only a quarter of this number has a complete appearance and is fragmentarily restored, 1/8 is partially preserved, and more than half of the objects are in a state of ruin. Half of the castles-ruins are almost completely lost. For further research and preservation of stone castles in Ukraine, it is necessary to focus efforts on their complete inventory, development of programs for their conservation, and restoration. A prerequisite is the activity of state bodies to popularize castles as an important component of the national cultural heritage.