The construction of the Powder Tower, located in Lviv, dates back 1554-1556 years. The tower belongs to the monuments of military and defense architecture that existed during the Renaissance.

Powder Tower was of great importance in the fortification of Lviv during the existence of Rzeczpospolita and served to defend city from the north side. The tower was located behind the second line of city fortifications along the defense billow and was used as a store of gunpowder and ammunition, and in peacetime - for grain storage.

Powder Tower was built of the rough stone, the plan clearly shows its shape - truncated ellipse. Semicircular, three-story building, with wall thickness of 2.5 meters, had gone underground for nearly two meters due to raising the level of the soil around it for more than four centuries. Therefore, because of this natural phenomenon the contemporaries cannot fully appreciate the architectural accuracy and clarity of the structure.

In 1954, the Powder Tower was restored. Five years later, in 1959, there appeared adorning above the entrance to the tower - figures of sleeping lions, and the very tower became the House of Architects in Lviv. In the days of the Soviet Union the plaster was removed from the walls of the building and there was discovered the original laying, making the building more valuable monument of architecture.

The Gunpowder Tower of 1554-1556 (4 Pidvalna Street) is the only monument of fortification construction in Lviv that has been preserved to date. Out of several dozen solid defensive towers, gates and bastions in Lviv, only one has survived to the present day – the Gunpowder Tower. It was built of stone left over from the old City Arsenal. This was the most solid tower, as it was from this direction that invaders from the East would often approach the city walls. The tower stands on defensive ramparts preserved from ancient times; two hundred years ago a park was laid out here and it was called the Governor’s Ramparts after the residence of the Austrian Governor of Galicia (‘Halychyna’), which was located nearby.

The Gunpowder Tower was not used exclusively for defensive purposes. Lviv was a trading centre, and so everything was designed to contribute to trade. During short intervals of peace without the looming threat of enemies, the tower was used as a grain storage.

Since the late 1950s the tower has accommodated the so-called House of the Architect which often hosts cultural events. Even though the tower looks quite vast from the outside, the inside facilities are rather confined: this is because the walls are about three metres wide. The tower entrance is guarded by two white marble lions of the 19th century, which, from among the approximately seven thousand stone lions in Lviv, are of the greatest artistic value.