On Saturday, March 4, a meeting of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities was held with the participation of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi and representatives of central authorities, regional leadership, heads of cities and villages, including those currently temporarily occupied. The event took place in the Assembly Hall of the main building of Lviv Polytechnic National University.
Leaders and other representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers, the Verkhovna Rada, the Office of the President, security and defense forces, as well as representatives of partner states of Ukraine also took part in the Congress session.
As the President of Ukraine emphasized, the main task of this Congress session is not only to sum up the key results of the work of state institutions and local authorities during the most difficult year for our country – the year of war, but also to determine solutions to make our country even stronger at all levels – from the central government structures to the management of the country’s communities.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, Alfred Riedel, Mayor of Grafenwöhr, President of the Association of Municipalities of Austria, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London and Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, addressed the participants of the Congress session in a video format.
An extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers was also held within the framework of the Congress session, at which the State Anti-Corruption Program for 2023–2025 was approved.
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The most beautiful room of the main building is the Assembly Hall. The interior of the Assembly Hall is a perfect example of the synthesis of arts in architecture, which forms a unique artistic image. The spaces between the sculptural allegorical figures are filled with eleven artistic canvases entitled together «History of Human Civilization». The cycle of paintings was made according to the sketches of the outstanding artist Jan Matejko, and was commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph I. The ceiling of the hall is made in the form of a Renaissance coffered ceiling, decorated with rosettes and gilded majolica.
In 2015, after scientific architectural and restoration studies, scientists, postgraduates and master’s students of the Institute of Architecture and Design, Lviv Polytechnic, began working on the restoration of the Assembly Hall. The main task they set before themselves was to restore the lost appearance of the main building of the University, which was once the meeting hall of the Great Senate. Restoration work lasted 5 years. In September 2020, the Assembly Hall was officially opened.
