The history of Ternopil describes the history of the city of Ternopil, located in modern day Ukraine.
History
The city was founded in 1540 by Polish commander and Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, as a military stronghold and castle. On 15 April 1540, the King of Poland Sigismund I in Kraków handed Tarnowski a permission for the establishment of Tarnopol settlement, in the vicinity of Sopilcze (Sopilche). Its Polish name "Tarnopol" means "Tarnowski's city" and stems from a combination of the founder's family name and the Greek term "polis". The etymology of the Tarnowski family surname, originating from the city of Tarnów (and thus the Ukrainian name "Ternopil"), is explained as derived from a field covered with thorns (). The city's coat of arms is based on the Tarnowski family Leliwa coat of arms.
In 1544, the Tarnopol Castle was completed and repelled the first Tatar attacks. On 20 January 1548, Tarnopol was granted legal rights by the King of Poland Sigismund I the Old which allowed the town to hold three fairs annually, and weekly trades on Mondays. Tarnopol received Magdeburg city rights two years later from Jan Tarnowski, regulating the duties of town residents. In 1548 the King of Poland also gave permission to create a pond near the Tarnopol suburb of Kutkovets. In 1549 the city managed to survive a Tatar siege by efforts of the Polish Duchess Eudokia Czartoryska (see House of Czartoryski). After the death of the Crown Hetman in 1561, Tarnopol became the property of his son Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski, who died childless in 1567. Since then, the city was owned by the daughter of Crown Hetman Zofia Tarnowska who was married to Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski. In 1570, she died in childbirth, and Tarnopol was passed to the Ostrogski family. In 1575 it was plundered by the Tatars. In 1623 the city passed to the Zamoyski family. In 1589 Tarnopol was visited by the Austrian diplomat who also mentioned the city's castle.
With the ongoing 1648–1654 Khmelnytsky Uprising, many residents of the city joined the ranks of the Khmelnytsky forces particularly during the 1649 Siege of Zbarazh that is located just . In September 1655 the united army of Muscovite and Ukrainian Cossack forces occupied Ternopil among other cities as it was moving towards Lwów (Lviv).
During the 1672–1676 Polish–Ottoman War, Tarnopol was almost completely destroyed by Turkish forces of Ibrahim Shishman Pasha in 1675 and rebuilt by Aleksander Koniecpolski but did not recover its previous glory until it passed to Marie Casimire, the wife of king John III Sobieski in 1690. The city was later sacked for the last time by Tatars in 1694, and twice by Russians in the course of the Great Northern War in 1710 and the War of the Polish Succession in 1733. In 1747 Józef Potocki invited the Dominicanes and founded the beautiful late-baroque Dominican Church (today the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary of the Ternopil-Zboriv archeparchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church). The city was looted during the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772) by the confederates, the king's army, and by the Russians. In 1770 it was devastated by an outbreak of smallpox.
In 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, the city came under Austrian rule. In 1809, after the War of the Fifth Coalition, the city came under Russian rule, incorporated into the newly created Ternopol krai. In 1815 the city (then with 11,000 residents) returned to Austrian rule in accordance with the Congress of Vienna. In 1820 Jesuits expelled from Polotsk by the Russians established a gymnasium in Tarnopol. In 1843 the last city's owner Jerzy Michal of Turkul sold the city to its residents for 175,000 florins. In 1870 the Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis connected Tarnopol with Lemberg in Austria-Hungary, accelerating the city's growth. At that time Tarnopol had a population of about 25,000.