Lviv

The Under the Black Eagle Pharmacy Museum in Lviv, Ukraine, stands as one of the oldest operating pharmacies in Ukraine, continuously serving the community since 1735 when it was established by military pharmacist Natorp. This unique institution seamlessly blends a functioning dispensary with a comprehensive museum experience, housing 16 rooms that guide visitors through different historic eras of medicinal care, progressing backward in time as they venture deeper into the building. The building's facade is adorned with relief portraits of Asclepius, the god of healing, and his daughter Hygieia, the goddess of health, while a forged sign displaying the medical emblem of a snake coiling around a bowl marks the 1735 founding date. Key exhibits include antique mortars and pestles, ornate pharmaceutical scales attached to meter-high figures of Aesculapus and Hygieia, vintage beakers, jars containing historic tinctures and elixirs, pill-making machinery, and a recreation of an 18th-century alchemist's laboratory in the basement dungeons. The museum boasts one of Eastern Europe's most comprehensive medical libraries with over a thousand ancient medical texts, and visitors can still purchase the famous "iron wine," an iron-enriched beverage historically used to raise hemoglobin levels. The ceiling features paintings of air, water, fire, and earth symbols representing the four humors of early medical theory, while the basement alchemist's laboratory showcases the mystical beginnings of pharmaceutical science with rare medicinal plants hanging from the walls.