Ivano-Frankivsk, formerly known as Stanislav, is a city in Western Ukraine with 230 thousand inhabitants. Founded in the 17th century as a Polish fortress, Stanislav in 1722 turned out to be a part of the Austrian Empire and became one of the most important cities in the Carpathians.
After World War I, it was temporarily the capital of the Western Republic of Ukraine, and was later integrated into the Polish Republic. At the beginning of World War II, it was annexed by the Soviet Union, and was occupied by Nazi Germany. In 1962, on its 300th anniversary, it was renamed Ivano-Frankivsk to honor the Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko. After the fall of the Soviet Union, was integrated in Ukraine.
The city is an important tourist center, serving as the gateway to the Ukrainian Carpathians. It has six universities and has about 35 thousand university students. Its economy is based on tourism, the financial sector, the forest resource industries, chemistry and new technologies. It is also an important cultural center of Western Ukraine and is the birthplace of Svetlana Aleksievich, the Novel Prize for Literature in 2015.
