In the north of Ternopil region, there is a small town of Kremenets, surrounded by the Kremenets mountains. The central street stretches along an erosion ravine running in a mountain valley. The town never owned a systemic structure; side streets lie on the slopes of the mountains surrounding the valley of the town. Already at the time of the Galician-Volyn principality, Kremenets was part of the system of defensive structures, in connection with which it was first mentioned in the Galician-Volyn Chronicle of 1227. Having sustained against the confrontation of the Mongol-Tatar invasion in 1241, it became the first among the Kievan Rus cities that did not succumb to foreigners. The town owes its name to the abundance of flint, which lies in the thickness of the rock, and is also found around the town in a free state. Kremenets was granted its Magdeburg rights in 1438, one the first among the Volyn settlements, later turning into a significant trade and craft center. The constant threat of Horde attacks prompted the development of castle fortifications. At first, the Lithuanian princes who owned the city from the 14th century, and later Queen Bona Sforza, the wife of the Polish king Sigismund I the Old, who received the ownership over Kremenets in 1536, turned the fortress into an impregnable stronghold. Subsequently, Kremenets became a significant cultural and religious center. There were educational institutions the fame of which spread far beyond the region – the Volyn gymnasium, Kremenets lyceum, and Volyn theological seminary. There were also Orthodox, Uniate, and Catholic monasteries, which left behind architectural complexes.
At the beginning of the XIX century, the town became a significant educational center of the Right Bank since the Volyn gymnasium was founded here, which was later renamed the lyceum. Scientific personnel of the European level concentrated here. The town gave birth to the Ukrainian composer Mykhailo Verykivsky, the Polish poet Juliusz Slovatsky, the Jewish enlightener Isaac Ber-Levinson, the Siberian researcher Alexander Chekanovsky, the postmodern writer and translator Yuriy Pokalchuk, as well as the translator and bard Viktor Morozov.